Question

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Why use getters and setters?

This is a newbie question. Is it very much necessary to use getmethods to access property values? Once the value has been assigned, one can get the values directory. For example, in the below code, displayName() can display firstName value without the help of any getter method. Or it is a standard coding standards that one must have getter and setter method or any other methods which gives that value?

class Test{

    private String firstName;

    public void setName(String fname){
        firstName = fname;
    }

    public void displayName() {
        System.out.println("Your name is " + firstName);
    }
}          

Answer 1

Tell, Don’t Ask is an important principle in object-oriented design. Generally you should tell objects to do things rather than ask them questions. getters/setters every where discourage this practise because you are encouraged to reach inside an object and get to the fields (or even worse reach in and poke things about in the case of setters). This breaks encapsulation and makes your code harder to reason about.

In your particular case, I’d create an object called Name that has a constructor taking the name and single method to display it.