Introduction to OOP
Vũ Thị Hồng Nhạn
([email protected])
Department of software engineering
Vietnam National Univ., Hanoi
Contents
What is OOP
Object vs. class
Fields, methods
method main()
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What is OOP?
OOP is a type of programming that is driven by
Object
modeling your code around building units called
objects Object
Each object, as its name implies, represents a
real object in the world around us like a person, Object
a table, a building, a book, a car, a tree..
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What is OOP?
OOP languages
Nowadays, almost every modern programming language you’ve
heard of is object-oriented including Java
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What is OOP?
idea of oop
When you are coding you want to solve a real world problem and
modeling your code to match what you’re trying to solve
makes perfect sense
Real world Java
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What is OOP?
Example
Build a Pokemon game in java
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What is OOP?
Example
Build a Pokemon game in java Pokemon objects & items
•Need to have an object for each of the Pokemon characters, an
object for each item he can carry
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Example…
Each object is responsible for holding the data that describes itself
referred as FIELDs
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Example…
Along having fields, objects are also capable of performing actions
e.g., Pokemon can attack, dodge, and evolve
These actions in java are referred to as methods
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What is OOP?
Variable types
Just like creating variables of basic datatypes like integers and doubles (known as
primitive variables)
An object is nothing more than an enhanced datatype that you get to design yourself
Primitive variables Object variables
int age; Pokemon pikachu;
double score; Item incubator;
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What is OOP?
Why use objects?
Objects combine variables together to make your code meaningful
code becomes more organized and easier to understand
Maintaining your code becomes much simpler
java won’t work without objects
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Fields
Fields of an object
are all the data variables that makes up that object
sometimes are referred to as attributes or member variables
Fields are usually made up of
primitive types (integer, character…)
but can also be objects themselves
String title;
E.g., a book object may contain fields like… String author;
int numberOfPages;
Then, a library object may contain a field named books that will store
all book objects in an array
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Fields…
Accessing a field in an object is done using the dot modifier “.”
e.g., to access the title field of an object called “book” you would use
book.title
You can use it directly as primitive variable and perform operations
String bookTitle = book.title; //store in a string variable
System.out.println(book.tititle); // printing
you can change a field’s value
book.numberOfpages=100;
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Methods
Running actions in objects look very much like calling a function
Methods in java are functions that belong to a particular object
To call a method in an object we use the dot modifier “.”
E.g.
Assume a book object has a method called setBookmark(int pageNo)
that takes the page number as parameter
if you want to set a bookmark at page 30, you can call the method and
pass in the page number as an argument
book.setBookmartk(30);
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summary
Fields and methods make an object useful
Fields store the object’s data
while methods perform actions to use or modify those data
However, some objects might have no fields and are just made up
of a bunch of methods that perform various actions
Other objects might only have fields that act as a way to organize
storing data but not include any methods
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Integrated development environment (IDE)
Java simply are plain text files with extension .java
Java project is a folder that contains a bunch of those java files
You can create a java project with a basic text editor
and need a compiler that runs on the command line
But how to make the development experience more pleasant ?
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IDE…
To be able to create and run any code in Java, you need two main
things
A helpful text editor that highlights keywords with different colors and
auto complete code
a compiler that converts your java code into computer code (known as
bytecode) that can be understood by computers and hence run properly
An IDE combines both of those
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IDE…
There are plenty of options out there, choosing one is usually based
on the programming language you’re using and your personal
preference
A list of the most commonly used Java IDEs
Ecliplse
Intellij
Android studio (based on Intellij)
NetBeans
BlueJ
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Class vs. Object
To design objects, we need to create classes
Class can be seen as the blueprint that defines what object should
look like
An object on the other hand is the actual entity that is created from
that class
i.e., a class is where you would list all the fields and implement
all the methods when defining what that object type should look
like
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Class vs. Object
Example
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Class
in Java, each class should be created in its own file
No java code can live anywhere outside a class
Classes (java files) interact with each other
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Classes vs. Objects
Class Object
What: A Data Type A Variable
Scattered around the
Where: Has its own file
project
CamelCase camelCase
Naming convention:
(starts with an upper case) (starts with a lower case)
Examples: String string
Book lordOfTheRings
Pokemon pikachu
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Everything is an object in Java
Because java is an OOP language, it includes classes that simply wrap
around all the primitive types themselves to offer some extra functionality
through their methods
Class Primitive type
Integer int
Long long
Double double
Character char
String char[]
Each of these classes is made up of the corresponding primitive types as its
fields, but usually also comes with some powerful methods
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The main() method
A java program can be as small as a single class
but usually a single program will be made up of 10 or even 100 of
classes
A good java program is one that divides the logic appropriately
so that each class ends up containing everything related to
that class and nothing more
Classes would call each other’s methods and update their fields to
make up the logic of the entire program all together
But, where should the program start from exactly?
the answer is the main() method
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The main() method…
public static void main(String [] args){
//start my program here
}
public: means you can run this method from anywhere in your java program
static: means it doesn’t need an object to run, which is why the computer
starts with this method before even creating any objects
void: the main method doesn’t return anything, it just runs when the
program starts and once it’s done the program terminates
String [] args: is the input parameter (array of Strings)
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The main() method…
This method is the starting point for any Java program, when a computer
runs a Java program, it looks for that main() method and runs it
inside it, you can create objects and call methods to run other parts of your
code
The main method can belong to any class, or you can create a specific
class just for that main method which is what most people do
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Creating a class
An example: open Notepad and edit the text below
public class HelloWorld {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Hello Java");
}
}
Save in HelloWorld.java
Compile and Run with Command Window
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Creating a class…
Compile
Run
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