Set and Get Methods in java?

Question

How can I use the set and get methods, and why should I use them? Are they really helpful? And also can you give me examples of set and get methods?

Answer 1

Some benefits of using getters and setters (known as encapsulation or data-hiding):

(originally answered here)

1. The fields of a class can be made read-only (by only providing the getter) or write-only (by only providing the setter). This gives the class a total control of who gets to access/modify its fields.

Example:

class EncapsulationExample {
    private int readOnly = -1;  // this value can only be read, not altered
    private int writeOnly = 0;    // this value can only be changed, not viewed
    public int getReadOnly() {
        return readOnly;
    }
    public int setWriteOnly(int w) {
        writeOnly = w;
    }
}

2. The users of a class do not need to know how the class actually stores the data. This means data is separated and exists independently from the users thus allowing the code to be more easily modified and maintained. This allows the maintainers to make frequent changes like bug fixes, design and performance enhancements, all while not impacting users.

Furthermore, encapsulated resources are uniformly accessible to each user and have identical behavior independent of the user since this behavior is internally defined in the class.

Example (getting a value):

class EncapsulationExample {
    private int value;
    public int getValue() {     
        return value; // return the value
    }
}

Now what if I wanted to return twice the value instead? I can just alter my getter and all the code that is using my example doesn't need to change and will get twice the value:

class EncapsulationExample {
    private int value;
    public int getValue() {
        return value*2; // return twice the value
    }
}

3. Makes the code cleaner, more readable and easier to comprehend.

Here is an example:

No encapsulation:

class Box {
    int widthS; // width of the side
    int widthT; // width of the top
    // other stuff
}

// ...
Box b = new Box();
int w1 = b.widthS;  // Hm... what is widthS again? 
int w2 = b.widthT;  // Don't mistake the names. I should make sure I use the proper variable here!

With encapsulation:

class Box {
    private int widthS; // width of the side
    private int widthT; // width of the top
    public int getSideWidth() {
        return widthS;
    }
    public int getTopWIdth() {
        return widthT;
    }
    // other stuff
}

// ...
Box b = new Box();
int w1 = b.getSideWidth(); // Ok, this one gives me the width of the side
int w2 = b.getTopWidth(); // and this one gives me the width of the top. No confusion, whew!

Look how much more control you have on which information you are getting and how much clearer this is in the second example. Mind you, this example is trivial and in real-life the classes you would be dealing with a lot of resources being accessed by many different components. Thus, encapsulating the resources makes it clearer which ones we are accessing and in what way (getting or setting).

Here is good SO thread on this topic.

Here is good read on data encapsulation.

Answer 2

Having accessor methods is preferred to accessing fields directly, because it controls how fields are accessed (may impose data checking etc) and fits with interfaces (interfaces can not requires fields to be present, only methods).

Answer 3

Above answers all assume that the object in question is an object with behaviour. An advanced strategy in OOP is to separate data objects (that do zip, only have fields) and behaviour objects.

With data objects, it is perfectly fine to omit getters and instead have public fields. They usually don't have setters, since they most commonly are immutable - their fields are set via the constructors, and never again. Have a look at Bob Martin's Clean Code or Pryce and Freeman's Growing OO Software... for details.

Answer 4

public class Person{

private int age;

public int getAge(){
     return age;
}

public void setAge(int age){
     this.age = age;
}
}

i think this is you want.. and this also called pojo

Answer 5

The benefits of get() set() methods are as follows ..

1. You can serialize you object easily.
2. You can create a persistent object from the containing class.
3. You can convert the properties to JSON easily.
4. In the DAO layer (Frameworks like Hibernate) you can directly save the object to DB.
5. Easy understanding of object oriented concept.
6. Needs in all design pattern except possibly in single tone pattern.
7. Security for properties protecting direct access.
8. Polymorphism, Encapsulation can be easily understood and implemented by this type of class.

Example:

private String personName;
private int personId;

    public void setPersonName(String name) throws Exception{
    if(!(name.equals("")||name=="")){
      this.personName = name;
    }
  }
  public String getPersonName(){
    return this.personName;
  }
  public void setPersonId(int id) throws Exception{
    this.personId = id;
  }
  public int getPersonId(){
    return this.personId;
  }

Answer 6

I don't see a simple answer to the second question (why) here. So here goes.

Let's say you have a public field that gets used very often in your code. Whenever you decide you need to do something extra before you give or set this field you have a problem. You have to create a special getter and setter for this field and change your complete code from using the field directly to using the getter and setters.

Now imagine you are developing a library widely used by many people. When you need to make a change like the above and set direct access of the field to private the code of all the people using this field will break.

Using getters and setters is about future planning of the code, it makes it more flexible. Of course you can use public fields, especially for simple classes that just hold some data. But it's always a good idea to just make the field privately and code a get and set method for it.