Revisi&ng

Methods again!

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

Example

Consider the following deni&on of a class to represent an investment account. No&ce that Ive made the instance variables public so I can access them outside the class just for illustra&on in this example.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

Example, contd

Here is a program that creates two instances of the investment account. No&ce that because the instance variables of the InvestmentAccountV1 class are public, I can ini&alize them outside the class.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

CALLING VOID METHODS

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

Example, contd

What happens when I run this program? The entry point of a program is always the main method. The statements in the main method are executed in sequence. When a method is called within main, e.g. myAccount.printInfo(), it is as if all the code for the method was inserted directly into main at that point.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

Example, contd

Remember: When a method is called within main, it is as if all the code for the method was inserted directly into main at that point. We just need to remember that if the method is called on an object, any references to instance variables inside the method refer to that objects instance variables.

E.g., this is the accountHolder instance variable of the myAccount object

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

Example, contd

Remember: When a method is called within main, it is as if all the code for the method was inserted directly into main at that point. Thus, our program is equivalent to this one.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

Example, contd

This is the output of the equivalent program.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

Example, contd

This is the output of the original program. It is the same as the output of the equivalent program on the previous slide.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

CONSTRUCTORS

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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Example, contd

Note that when we create an object, we are actually calling a special method the constructor of the object.

But we didnt write a constructor! Thats not a problem -- if we dont provide a constructor, Java automa&cally provides a simple one for us, so that objects of our class can be created.
G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011 11

Example, contd

The constructor that Java automa&cally provides, ini&alizes all instance variables to their default values. It is as if we wrote this default constructor for our class:

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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Example, contd

Segng the values of the instance variables of the InvestmentAccountV1 objects in the main method is cumbersome and violates the principle of encapsula&on.

Lets create a constructor of the InvestmentAccountV1 class, that will ini&alize the instance variables inside the object at the same &me the object is created!
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Example, contd

We will move these three lines of code into the constructor for the InvestmentAccountV1 class.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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Example, contd

Hmm. We have a problem now, all instances of the InvestmentAccountV1 class will the same informa&on Ayorkor Korsah as the account holder, 1000.00 as the ini&al amount, and 0.05 as the compound interest rate. If we do this, how will we be able to create Kobbys account???

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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Example, contd

Lets modify things slightly. If we use temporary variables or placeholders to hold the desired values for the account holder, the ini&al amount and the compound interest rate, then the code for ini&alizing Ayorkors account and Kobbys account are now exactly the same. We just need to set the placeholder values correctly

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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Example, contd

We will put these three lines of code into the constructor for the InvestmentAccountV1 class. Our temporary variables, or placeholders, become the formal parameters or arguments for the constructor that is, they represent informa&on that needs to be provided by the caller when the method is called/invoked.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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Example, contd

We can now replace the indicated sec&ons of code with calls to our new constructor, as shown below.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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Example, contd

Note that when we call the constructor, we pass it some actual parameters (the values of our placeholder variables). The values of the actual parameters are automa&cally copied into the constructors formal parameters.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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Example, contd

This is the resul&ng program our main method has only 4 statements!

This is the output of the program exactly what it was previously.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011 20

Example, contd

Now that we have a constructor and dont need to set the values of the instance variables in the main method outside the InvestmentAccountV1 class, we can make these instance variables private.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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CALLING METHODS THAT RETURN A VALUE

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011 22

Example, contd

Now, we have extended main to call the balanceAler5Years() method of the two InvestAccountV1 objects we have created.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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Example, contd

A key dierence between the balanceAler5Years() method and the printInfo() method is that the balanceAler5Years() method has a return value (its return type is double).

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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Example, contd

If a method returns a value, you can invoke it anywhere that you would use a value of the type returned by the method. In this case, balanceAler5Years() returns a double. We thus invoke it on the right hand- side of an assignment statement which assigns the return value to a variable of type double.

Remember DecimalFormat? Here, we use it to print a value to 2 decimal places.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011 25

Example, contd
This is the output of the program.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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MORE ABOUT METHODS THAT HAVE PARAMETERS/ARGUMENTS

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011 27

Example, contd

A problem with the deni&on of our InvestmentAccountV1 class is that it is rather inexible we can gure out the balance aler 5 years, but not aler any other number of years (e.g. 1 year, 2 years, 10 years, etc)
G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011 28

Example, contd

We can x this by changing the balanceAler5Years method to a method called balanceAlerNYears, which takes in a parameter/argument for the number of years, n.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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Example, contd
This is the output of the program.

We can call this method in main to nd out the balance aler, say, 10 years

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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Example, contd

We can even print a table that lists the balance every 5 years, up to 30 years!

This is the output of the program.

G. Ayorkor Korsah, Ashesi University College, Programming II - First Semester 2011

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