What are getter methods and setter methods?

Hi

Getter and Setter methods are used when you want to get or set a field (int, String, etc) which is private in a class, from outside the class. Not all variables can be made public and static for obvious reasons.

Suppose you have a class User :

Class User {

private String username;

private String password;

}

For every new user, you will need a new instance of class User.

User new_user = new User();

Suppose you want to set the password for instance new_user. Since password is a private variable, you can't access it from outside.

Instead, you create a public method which can help you access the variable.

Class User {

private String username;

private String password;

public String getPassword() {

return password;

}

public void setPassword (String p){

password = p;

}

}

Now you can get/ set password through these methods.

new_user.setPassword(“29091992”); will set the password to 29091992.

Similarly new_user.getPassword(); will fetch the password for this instance.

Hope this helps.