Exercise 2 Methods, properties and constructors

By the end of this exercise you will be able to

Introduction
A class in Java is like a C language struct with the dierence that in addition to being able to hold data, Java classes can also contain program code. A class is comprised of properties and methods. Properties are identical to the data members of a C struct, and methods are the Java analogue of C functions. Unlike C functions, Java methods always reside within a class. This exercise will get you used to using classes in Java by introducing you to a class Person that represents the concept of a human being. In order to use the Person class we must rst create instances or objects of that class. In the example listing we create two such objects, one to represent Luke Skywalker and the other to represent Winston Peters. If you look at the program listing now, you will see that the the rst two lines of the main method say new Person(...). These cause the constructor of the Person class to be called which is a special method with the job of creating the Person objects and setting the initial values of the properties to sensible values. The information inside the brackets are given to the constructor like arguments to a function so that each object is constructed in its own way according to what kind of object it is supposed to represent. For example, the Luke Skywalker object is constructed using the string "Luke Skywalker" which is copied into the name property and the number 34 which is copied into the age property. The expressions ls and wp are references which are like handles on the objects so that if we want to use one of the methods or properties of the Person class we can say which object we are referring to, eg: ls to refer to the Luke Skywalker object, wp to refer to the Winston Peters object. Execution of the Java program starts at the main method, so that is where you will make most of your changes to the program code, except where you are asked to dene a new method or property of Person, in which case it belongs inside the Person class. If you understand this introduction then you are now ready to start using the object-oriented style of programing that Java follows!

Questions
NOTE: At the end of each question, you should make sure that your program still compiles and that when you run it, it behaves as expected. 1

Program listing
class Person { // Properties of the class... private String name; private int age; // Constructor of the class... public Person(String aName, int anAge) { name = aName; age = anAge; } // Methods of the class... public void talk() { System.out.println("Hi, my names " + name); System.out.println("and my age is " + age); System.out.println(); } public void commentAboutAge() { if (age < 5) { System.out.println("baby"); } if (age == 5) { System.out.println("time to start school"); } } } class PersonTest { // The main method is the point of entry into the program... public static void main(String[] args) { Person ls = new Person("Luke Skywalker",34); Person wp = new Person("Winston Peters",48); ls.talk(); wp.talk(); } }

1. Fetch the le PersonTest.java, which contains the code from the program listing and load it into your editor. 2. Think of a new property that a person can have and add it to the Person class. You should be able to do this by copying the pattern of the other properties of the Person class. Four changes to the program listing are needed: (a) Add the property name and its type to the properties section of the class. (b) Add an extra parameter to the the constructor so that the property gets initialised correctly. (c) Modify the main method so that the Luke Skywalker and Winston Peters objects get the appropriate value of the new property. (d) Modify the talk method so that the new property is printed to the screen when the talk method is called. 3. Modify the commentAboutAge method to print the message old person if the persons age is greater than sixty. 4. In the main method add two calls to commentAboutAge, one for Luke Skywalker and one for Winston Peters. 5. Write a method growOlder that adds one year to the persons age. Make Winston Peters get older by one year by putting a call in the main method to do this. HINT: Look at the talk and the commentAboutAge methods to see how to dene a method. 6. Write a method giveKnighthood that adds the word Sir to the beginning of a persons name. Then make Winston Peters become Sir Winston Peters by calling this method from the main method. HINT: This is much like question 5, except you are adding strings instead of numbers. 7. How is it possible to print the value of Luke Skywalkers age directly from inside the main method without calling the talk method? HINT: The talk method has a line of code to print the persons age. Copy this code to the main method, but since you are in another class from the age property, you will need to mention the name of the object in front of the age property, so age becomes ls.age. Also, you will need to change the denition of the age property from private to public to get this change to work. Why you need to do this will be covered in more detail in another exercise. 8. Delete the calls to commentAboutAge that you added in question 4, and instead put a call to commentAboutAge in the talk method. Note that when you are calling a method of the same class you are in, you dont have to put the object name in front of the method. Your program should generate similar output to what it did before. 9. Write a growOlderBy method which is similar to the growOlder method, except that it has an int parameter called years which says how many years the person should grow older by. In the main method, place a call to growOlderBy to make Luke Skywalker age by ten years. 10. Delete the Person constructor and replace the lines that create the Luke Skywalker and Winston Peters objects with the following: Person ls = new Person(); Person wp = new Person(); When a class doesnt have a constructor, the compiler automatically gives it a zero-argument constructor that sets all numeric values to zero and all reference values to null, meaning no object. Run the program again to see what is output.