CSC 226 INTRODUCTION TO OOP
Lecture Notes 2
Basic Concepts of Object Oriented Programming
It is necessary to understand some of the concepts used extensively in object-oriented
programming. These include:
• Objects
• Classes
• Data abstraction and encapsulation
• Inheritance
• Polymorphism
• Dynamic binding
• Message passing
We shall discuss these concepts in some detail in this section.
1 Objects
Objects are the basic run time entities in an object- oriented system. They may represent a
person, a place, a bank account, a table of data or any item that the program has to handle.
Object is a real world entity, for example, chair, car, pen, mobile, laptop etc.
In other words, object is an entity that has state and behavior. Here, state means data and
behavior means functionality.
They may also represent user-defined data such as vectors, time and lists. Programming
problem is analyzed in term of objects and the nature of communication between them.
Program objects should be chosen such that they match closely with the real-world objects.
Objects take up space in the memory and have an associated address like a record in Pascal, or
a structure in c.
When a program is executed, the objects interact by sending messages to one another.
For example, if “customer” and “account” are to object in a program, then the customer
object may send a message to the account object requesting for the bank balance. Each
object contain data, and code to manipulate data. Objects can interact without having to
know details of each other’s data or code. It is a sufficient to know the type of message
accepted, and the type of response returned by the objects. Although different author
represent them differently fig 1.1 shows two notations that are popularly used in object-
oriented analysis and design.
OBJECTS: STUDENT
DATA
Name
Date-of-birth
Marks
FUNCTIONS
Total
Average
Display
………
Fig. 1.1 representing an object
2 Classes
In C++, class is a group of similar objects. It is a template from which objects are created. It
can have fields, methods, constructors etc.
Let's see an example of C++ class that has three fields only.
1. class Student
2. {
3. public:
4. int id; //field or data member
5. float salary; //field or data member
6. String name;//field or data member
7. }
Let's see an example of class that has two fields: id and name. It creates instance of the class,
initializes the object and prints the object value.
1. #include <iostream>
2. using namespace std;
3. class Student {
4. public:
5. int id;//data member (also instance variable)
6. string name;//data member(also instance variable)
7. };
8. int main() {
9. Student s1; //creating an object of Student
10. s1.id = 002;
11. s1.name = "Akinyemi";
12. cout<<s1.id<<endl;
13. cout<<s1.name<<endl;
14. return 0;
15. }
Output:
002
Akinyemi
A C++ class combines data and methods for manipulating the data into one. Classes also
determine the forms of objects. The data and methods contained in a class are known as
class members. We just mentioned that objects contain data, and code to manipulate that
data. The entire set of data and code of an object can be made a user -defined data type
with the help of class. In fact, objects are variables of the type class. Once a class has
been defined, we can create any number of objects belonging to that class. Each object is
associated with the data of type class with which they are created. A class is thus a
collection of objects similar types. For examples, Mango, Apple and orange members of
class fruit. Classes are user-defined that types and behave like the built-in types of a
programming language. The syntax used to create an object is not different then the
syntax used to create an integer object in C. If fruit has been defines as a class, then the
statement Fruit Mango; Will create an object mango belonging to the class fruit.
C++ Classes/Objects
Everything in C++ is associated with classes and objects, along with its attributes and
methods. For example: in real life, a car is an object. The car has attributes, such as
weight and color, and methods, such as drive and brake.
Attributes and methods are basically variables and functions that belongs to the class.
These are often referred to as "class members".
A class is a user-defined data type that we can use in our program, and it works as an
object constructor, or a "blueprint" for creating objects.
We can think of a class as a sketch (prototype) of a house. It contains all the details about
the floors, doors, windows, etc. Based on these descriptions we build the house. House is
the object.
Create a Class
To create a class, use the class keyword:
A class is defined in C++ using keyword class followed by the name of the class.
The body of the class is defined inside the curly brackets and terminated by a semicolon
at the end.
For example,
Here, we defined a class named Room.
The variables length, breadth, and height declared inside the class are known as data
members. And, the functions calculateArea() and calculateVolume() are known
as member functions of a class.
Example
Create a class called "MyClass":
class MyClass { // The class
public: // Access specifier
int myNum; // Attribute (int variable)
string myString; // Attribute (string variable)
};
Example explained
The class keyword is used to create a class called MyClass.
The public keyword is an access specifier, which specifies that members
(attributes and methods) of the class are accessible from outside the class. You
will learn more about access specifiers later.
Inside the class, there is an integer variable myNum and a string
variable myString. When variables are declared within a class, they are
called attributes.
At last, end the class definition with a semicolon;.
C++ Objects
When a class is defined, only the specification for the object is defined; no memory or
storage is allocated. To use the data and access functions defined in the class, we need
to create objects.
Syntax to Define Object in C++
We can create objects of Room class (defined in the above example) as follows:
Here, two objects room1 and room2 of the Room class are created in sampleFunction().
Similarly, the objects room3 and room4 are created in main().
As we can see, we can create objects of a class in any function of the program. We can
also create objects of a class within the class itself, or in other classes.
Also, we can create as many objects as we want from a single class.
C++ Access Data Members and Member Functions
We can access the data members and member functions of a class by using a . (dot)
operator. For example,
This will call the calculateArea() function inside the Room class for object room2.
Similarly, the data members can be accessed as:
In this case, it initializes the length variable of room1 to 5.5.
Example 1: Object and Class in C++ Programming
// Program to illustrate the working of
// objects and class in C++ Programming
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
// create a class
class Room {
public:
double length;
double breadth;
double height;
double calculateArea() {
return length * breadth;
}
double calculateVolume() {
return length * breadth * height;
}
};
int main() {
// create object of Room class
Room room1;
// assign values to data members
room1.length = 42.5;
room1.breadth = 30.8;
room1.height = 19.2;
// calculate and display the area and volume of the room
cout << "Area of Room = " << room1.calculateArea() << endl;
cout << "Volume of Room = " << room1.calculateVolume() << endl;
return 0;
}
Output
Area of Room = 1309
Volume of Room = 25132.8
In this program, we have used the Room class and its object room1 to calculate the area
and volume of a room.
In main(), we assigned the values of length, breadth, and height with the code:
room1.length = 42.5;
room1.breadth = 30.8;
room1.height = 19.2;
We then called the functions calculateArea() and calculateVolume() to perform the
necessary calculations.
Note the use of the keyword public in the program. This means the members are public
and can be accessed anywhere from the program.
As per our needs, we can also create private members using the private keyword. The
private members of a class can only be accessed from within the class. For example,
class Test {
private:
int a;
void function1() { }
public:
int b;
void function2() { }
}
Here, a and function1() are private. Thus they cannot be accessed from outside the class.
On the other hand, b and function2() are accessible from everywhere in the program.
Create an Object
In C++, an object is created from a class.
We have already created the class named MyClass, so now we can use this to create
objects.
To create an object of MyClass, specify the class name, followed by the object name.
To access the class attributes (myNum and myString), use the dot syntax (.) on the object:
Example
Create an object called "myObj" and access the attributes:
class MyClass { // The class
public: // Access specifier
int myNum; // Attribute (int variable)
string myString; // Attribute (string variable)
};
int main() {
MyClass myObj; // Create an object of MyClass
// Access attributes and set values
myObj.myNum = 15;
myObj.myString = "Some text";
// Print attribute values
cout << myObj.myNum << "\n";
cout << myObj.myString;
return 0;
}
Multiple Objects
You can create multiple objects of one class:
Example
// Create a Car class with some attributes
class Car {
public:
string brand;
string model;
int year;
};
int main() {
// Create an object of Car
Car carObj1;
carObj1.brand = "BMW";
carObj1.model = "X5";
carObj1.year = 1999;
// Create another object of Car
Car carObj2;
carObj2.brand = "Ford";
carObj2.model = "Mustang";
carObj2.year = 1969;
// Print attribute values
cout << carObj1.brand << " " << carObj1.model << " " << carObj1.year << "\n";
cout << carObj2.brand << " " << carObj2.model << " " << carObj2.year << "\n";
return 0;
}
