Objects, Classes, Interfaces, Packages, and Inheritance In Java

What is an Object?

An object is a bundle of related state and behavior.
Objects share two characteristics: 1. state 2. behavior
Dogs have
- state (name, color, breed, hungry) and
- behavior (barking, fetching, wagging tail).
Bicycles also have
- state (current gear, current pedal cadence, current speed) and
- behavior (changing gear, changing pedal cadence, applying brakes).
Identifying the state and behavior for real-world objects is a great way to begin thinking in terms of object-oriented programming.
An object stores its state in fields (variables in some programming languages) and exposes its behavior through methods (functions in some programming languages).
Methods operate on an object's internal state and serve as the primary mechanism for object-to-object communication.
Hiding internal state and requiring all interaction to be performed through an object's methods is known as data encapsulation — a fundamental principle of object-oriented programming.

What is a Class?

Class help us to create blueprint of many individual objects all of the same kind.
There may be thousands of other bicycles in existence, all of the same make and model.
Each bicycle was built from the same set of blueprints and therefore contains the same components.
In object-oriented terms, we say that your new_bicycle is an instance of the class Bicycle.

Example of class and object creation

class Bicycle {

    int cadence = 0;
    int speed = 0;
    int gear = 1;

    void changeCadence(int newValue) {
         cadence = newValue;
    }

    void changeGear(int newValue) {
         gear = newValue;
    }

    void speedUp(int increment) {
         speed = speed + increment;   
    }

    void applyBrakes(int decrement) {
         speed = speed - decrement;
    }

    void printStates() {
         System.out.println("cadence:" +
             cadence + " speed:" + 
             speed + " gear:" + gear);
    }
}

You may have noticed that the Bicycle class does not contain a main() method. That is because it is not a complete application; it is just the blueprint for bicycles that might be used in an application. The responsibility of creating and using new Bicycle objects belongs to some other class in your application. (here it is BicycleDemo )

class BicycleDemo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        // Create two different 
        // Bicycle objects
        Bicycle bike1 = new Bicycle();
        Bicycle bike2 = new Bicycle();

        // Invoke methods on 
        // those objects
        bike1.changeCadence(50);
        bike1.speedUp(10);
        bike1.changeGear(2);
        bike1.printStates();

        bike2.changeCadence(50);
        bike2.speedUp(10);
        bike2.changeGear(2);
        bike2.changeCadence(40);
        bike2.speedUp(10);
        bike2.changeGear(3);
        bike2.printStates();
    }
}

What is Inheritance?

Object-oriented programming allows classes to inherit commonly used state and behavior from other classes. In this example, Bicycle now becomes the superclass of MountainBike, RoadBike, and TandemBike. In the Java programming language, each class is allowed to have one direct superclass, and each superclass has the potential for an unlimited number of subclasses:

example

class MountainBike extends Bicycle {

    // new fields and methods defining 
    // a mountain bike would go here

}

This gives MountainBike all the same fields and methods as Bicycle, yet allows its code to focus exclusively on the features that make it unique. This makes code for your subclasses easy to read. However, you must take care to properly document the state and behavior that each superclass defines, since that code will not appear in the source file of each subclass.

What is an Interface?

As you have already learned, objects define their interaction with the outside world through the methods that they expose.
Methods form the object's interface with the outside world
so an interface is a group of related methods with empty bodies. A bicycle's behavior, if specified as an interface, might appear as follows:

interface Bicycle {

    //  wheel revolutions per minute
    void changeCadence(int newValue);

    void changeGear(int newValue);

    void speedUp(int increment);

    void applyBrakes(int decrement);
}

class ACMEBicycle implements Bicycle {

    int cadence = 0;
    int speed = 0;
    int gear = 1;

   // The compiler will now require that methods
   // changeCadence, changeGear, speedUp, and applyBrakes
   // all be implemented. Compilation will fail if those
   // methods are missing from this class.

    void changeCadence(int newValue) {
         cadence = newValue;
    }

    void changeGear(int newValue) {
         gear = newValue;
    }

    void speedUp(int increment) {
         speed = speed + increment;   
    }

    void applyBrakes(int decrement) {
         speed = speed - decrement;
    }

    void printStates() {
         System.out.println("cadence:" +
             cadence + " speed:" + 
             speed + " gear:" + gear);
    }
}

Implementing an interface allows a class to become more formal about the behavior it promises to provide. Interfaces form a contract between the class and the outside world, and this contract is enforced at build time by the compiler. If your class claims to implement an interface, all methods defined by that interface must appear in its source code before the class will successfully compile.

What is a Package?

A package is a namespace that organizes a set of related classes and interfaces. Conceptually you can think of packages as being similar to different folders on your computer. You might keep HTML pages in one folder, images in another, and scripts or applications in yet another. Because software written in the Java programming language can be composed of hundreds or thousands of individual classes, it makes sense to keep things organized by placing related classes and interfaces into packages.
The Java Platform API Specification contains the complete listing for all packages, interfaces, classes, fields, and methods supplied by the Java SE platform. Load the page in your browser and bookmark it. As a programmer, it will become your single most important piece of reference documentation.