Wrapper Class

Module-1

Professor & Technical Trainer / CSE

Saveetha School of Engineering, SIMATS
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Wrapper Class
 As we know, Java is not pure object oriented programming language because of primitive data
type.

 Wrapper class in Java is the type of class that provides a mechanism to convert the primitive
data types into the objects and vice-versa.

 The process of converting primitive data types into an object is called boxing

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Wrapper Class

Hierarchy of Wrapper Class

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Need of Wrapper Class

 Wrapper classes are used to provide a mechanism to ‘wrap’ or bind the values of primitive data
types into an object.

 Wrapper classes are also used to provide a variety of utility functions for primitives data types
like converting primitive types to string objects and vice-versa, converting to various bases like
binary, octal or hexadecimal, or comparing various objects.

 We cannot provide null values to Primitive types but wrapper classes can be null. So wrapper
classes can be used in such cases we want to assign a null value to primitive data types.

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Number Class

 Java Number class is the super class of all the numeric wrapper classes.

 The Number class contains some methods to provide the common operations for all the sub
classes.

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1.Value() Method
 This method is used for converting numeric object into a primitive data type.
For example we can convert a Integer object to int or Double object to float type.
Double d1 = new Double("4.2365");
byte b = d1.byteValue();
short s = d1.shortValue();
Methods int i = d1.intValue();
byte byteValue() long l = d1.longValue();
short shortValue() float f = d1.floatValue();
int intValue() double d = d1.doubleValue();
long longValue() System.out.println("converting Double to byte : " + b);
float floatValue() System.out.println("converting Double to short : " + s);
double doubleValue() System.out.println("converting Double to int : " + i);
System.out.println("converting Double to long : " + l);
System.out.println("converting Double to float : " + f);
System.out.println("converting Double to double : " + d1);

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Wrapper Class
2.valueOf() Method
 This method is used to get an Integer object representing the specified int value.
 It takes a single int type argument and returns an Integer instance

int a = 95;
Integer x = Integer.valueOf(a); Output:
System.out.println("valueOf(a) = " + x); valueOf(a) = 95

3. parseInt() Method
 This method is used to parse the specified string argument as a signed decimal integer.
 The characters in the string must all be decimal digits.
 It takes a single argument of string type and returns an int value.
String a = "95";
Integer x = Integer.parseInt(a); Output:
System.out.println("parseInt(a) = " + x); parseInt(a) = 95

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Wrapper Class
4.toString() Method
 This method returns a String object representing this Integer's value.
 The value is converted to signed decimal representation and returned as a string.
 It overrides toString() method of Object class.
 It does not take any argument but returns a string representation of the value of this object in base 10.

int a = 95;
Integer x = new Integer(a); Output:
System.out.println("toString(a) = " + Integer.toString(a)); toString(a) = 95

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5.compareTo() Method

 This method compares the input argument with the Number object.

 It returns 1 (positive number) if the value of Number object is greater than the argument, -1 (negative
number) if it is less than the value of argument and 0 if it is equal to the argument.

 But both the argument and the number should be of the same type

Integer num1 = new Integer("5");

System.out.println("comparing num1 with 10 is " + num1.compareTo(10));
System.out.println("comparing num1 with 1 is " + num1.compareTo(1));

Output:
comparing num1 with 10 is -1
comparing num1 with 1 is 1

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Wrapper Class
6.equals() Method

 The equals method checks if the number and the argument passed through the method is not null and
equal to the number.

 If both the numbers are equal, it returns true. If not, it returns false.

 They also have to be of the same type.

Integer num1 = new Integer("5");
Short s = new Short("5");
Integer num2 = new Integer("5");
System.out.println("Is the short value equal to num1? " + num1.equals(s));
System.out.println("is the integer value equal to num1? " + num1.equals(num2));

Output:
Is the short value equal to num1? false
is the integer value equal to num1? true

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Wrapper Class
Autoboxing and Unboxing in Java

 Java Autoboxing is the process of converting a primitive datatype to its specific wrapper class object.
This is useful when:

 Primitive datatype is passed as an argument to a method that expects an object.

 Variable is assigned to the corresponding wrapper class.

 Java Unboxing is the reverse of autoboxing. It is the process of converting the Wrapper class object
into its corresponding primitive datatype. This is useful when:

 Wrapper class object is used where a primitive datatype is expected.

 It is assigned to a primitive

.
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Example:

System.out.println("Understanding Autoboxing");
//This is a primitive datatype
Integer i = 10;
//Autoboxing of the primitive value 10 to an object
System.out.println("The integer is " + i);
System.out.println("Understanding Unboxing");
Integer num = new Integer(98);
int unboxnum = num;
//Unboxing of the num object to a primitive datatype int
System.out.println("The value of the integer is " + unboxnum); Output:

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