the use of private keyword

Question

Hi everyone

I am new to programming. I am learning Java now, there is something I am not really sure, that the use of private. Why programmer set the variable as private then write , getter and setter to access it. Why not put everything in public since we use it anyway.

public class BadOO {
    public int size;

    public int weight;
    ...
}

public class ExploitBadOO {
    public static void main (String [] args) {
        BadOO b = new BadOO();
        b.size = -5; // Legal but bad!!
    }
}

I found some code like this, and i saw the comment legal but bad. I don't understand why, please explain me.

Answer 1

The most important reason is to hide the internal implementation details of your class. If you prevent programmers from relying on those details, you can safely modify the implementation without worrying that you will break existing code that uses the class.

So by declaring the field private you prevent a user from accessing the variable directly. By providing gettters and setters you control exactly how a user may control the variable.

Answer 2

You shouldn't allow implementations to alter your records directly. Providing getters and setters means that you have exact control over how variables get assigned or what gets returned, etc. The same thing goes for the code in your constructor. What if the setter does something special when you assign a value to size? This won't happen if you assign it directly.

Answer 3

It's a common pet-peeve of many programmers - Java code with private fields and public accessors and mutators. The effect is as you say, those fields might as well been public.

There are programming languages that voice for the other extreme, too. Look at Python; just about everything is public, to some extent.

These are different coding practices and a common thing programmers deal with every day. But in Java, here's my rule of thumb:

• If the field is used purely as an attribute, both readable and writeable by anyone, make it public.
• If the field is used internally only, use private. Provide a getter if you want read access, and provide a setter if you want write access.
• There is a special case: sometimes, you want to process extra data when an attribute is accessed. In that case, you would provide both getters and setters, but inside these property functions, you would do more than just return - for example, if you want to track the number of times an attribute is read by other programs during an object's life time.

That's just a brief overview on access levels. If you're interested, also read up on protected access.

Answer 4

Its considered bad mainly because you loose control over who can change the value and what happens when the value changes.

In tiny application written by you for you it won't seem that important but as you start developing for larger and larger applications having control over who changes what and when becomes critical.

Imagine from your example above, you publish library as is, other people use it, then you decide you wanted to calculate another value in your bad class when the size changes ... suddenly the bad00 class has no way of knowing and you can't change it because other people rely on it.

Instead if you had a set method you could extend it to say

void SetSize(int newSize)
{ 
   size = newSize;
   DoCalculation;
}

You can extend the functionality without breaking other peoples reliance on you.

Answer 5

C# programmers use this equally as much, or maybe more frequently than I see in Java. C# calls it properties where in Java it is accessors/mutators

For me it makes sense to have getter and setter methods to encapsulate the classes so that no class can change the instance variables of another class.

Answer 6

Anything public in your class is a contract with the users of the class. As you modify the class, you must maintain the contract. You can add to the contract (new methods, variables, etc.), but you can't remove from it. Idealy you want that contract to be as small as possible. It is useful to make everything private that you can. If you need direct access from package members, make it protected. Only make those things public which are required by your users.

Exposing variables means that you are contracting forever, to have that variable and allow users to modify it. As discussed above, you may find you need to invoke behaviour when a variable is accessed. This can be be done if you only contract for the getter and setter methods.

Many of the early Java classes have contracts which require them to be thread safe. This adds significant overhead in cases where only one thread can access the instance. Newer releases have new classes which duplicate or enhance the functionality but drop the syncronization. Hence StringBuilder was added and in most cases should be used instead of StringBuffer.

Answer 7

The main reason to not just make the variable public in the first place is that if you did make it public, you would create more headaches later on.

For example, one programmer writes public getters and setters around a private member variable. Three months later, he needs to verify that the variable is never "set" to null. He adds in a check in the "setFoo(...)" method, and all attempts to set the variable will then be checked for "setting it to null". Case closed, and with little effort.

Another programmer realizes that putting in public getters and setters around a private member variable is violating the spirit of encapsulation, he sees the futility of the methods and decides to just make the member variable public. Perhaps this gains a bit of a performance boost, or perhaps the programmer just wants to "write it as it is used". Three months later, he needs to verify that the variable is never "set" to null. He scans every access to the variable, effectively searching through the entire code base, including all code that might be accessing the variable via reflection. This includes all 3rd party libraries which has extended his code, and all newly written modules which used his code after it was written. He then either modifies all calls to guarantee that the variable is never set to null. The case is never closed, because he can't effectively find all accesses to the exposed member, nor does he have access to all 3rd party source code. With imperfect knowledge of newly written modules, the survey is guaranteed to be incomplete. Finally he has no control over the future code which may access the public member, and that code may contain lines which set the member variable to null.

Of course the second programmer could then break all existing code by putting "get" and "set" methods around the variable and making it private, but hey, he could have done that three months earlier and saved himself the explanation of why he needed to break everyone else's code.

Call it what you will, but putting public "get" and "set" methods around a private member variable is defensive programming which has been brought about by many years (i.e. decades) of experience.

Answer 8

It depends on who access these public variables. Most likely, only by people inside your company/team. Then it's trivial to refactor them into getters/setters when necessary. I say in this case, it's better to leave the variables public; unless you are forced to follow the java bean convention.

If you are writing a framework or a library intended for the public, then you shouldn't expose variables. It's impossible for you to change them into getters/setters later.

But the 2nd case is more rare than the first; people apply extremely unreasonable assumptions when it come to software engineer, as if they are not writing code, instead they are carving code in stone. And as if the whole world is watching while you code - in reality, nobody will ever read your code except yourself

Answer 9

This is indeed used to hide the internal implementation. This also helps is providing extra bit of logic on your variables. Say you need to make sure that the value passed for a varable should not be 0/null, you can provide this logic in the set method. Also in the same way you can provide some logic while getting the value, say you have a object variable which is not initialised and you are accessing that object, in this case you cand provide the logic to null check for that object and always return an object.

Answer 10

I highly recommend the book Effective Java, it contains a lot of useful information about how to write better programs in Java.

Your question is addressed in items 13 and 14 of that book:

• Item 13: Minimize the accessibility of classes and members
• Item 14: In public classes, use accessor methods, not public fields

Answer 11

Okay. We are talking about Objects here. The real world objects. If they are not private,the user of your class is allowed to change. What if for a Circle class, and for the radius attribute/property of the Circle class, the user sets value as '0'. It doesn't make sense for a Circle to exist with radius as '0'. You can avoid such mistakes if you make your attributes private and give a setter method and in which and throw an Exception/Error (instructing the user ) that it is not allowed to create a Circle with radisu as '0'. Basically, the objects that are created out of your class - are meant to exist as you wished to have them exist. This is one of the ways to achieve it.

Answer 12

As stated earlier, the reason for making a variable private is to hide it from the outside. But if you make a getter AND a setter then you may as well make the variable itself public. If you find yourself later in a position that you made the wrong choice, then you must refactor your code from using the public variable into using the getter/setter which may not be a problem. But it can be a problem if other code, which you do not control, starts depending on your code. Then such a refactoring will break the other code. If you use getters and setters from the start you will reduce that risk in exchange for a little effort. So it depends on your situation.