LESSON 634 OF 677 · OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING

Access Modifiers in Kotlin

Lesson

TL ; DR:

An access modifier controls who can see a member of a class. The two you'll use most are public (anyone) and private (only this class).
Make data private so callers can't break invariants. Expose what they need through public methods (often called getters and setters):
```
class Dog(private val name: String) {
    fun getName(): String {
        return name
    }
}
```
Outside the class, rex.name is a compile error. Use rex.getName() instead.

Full lesson:

So far every field we wrote was public. That's convenient, but leaks internals. If you later decide to validate or compute the value differently, every caller in the codebase breaks.

Encapsulation

Encapsulation is the idea that an object's data should be hidden behind methods. The class controls how it's read and written; outside code only sees the API.

class Account {
    private var balance: Double = 0.0

    fun deposit(amount: Double) {
        if (amount < 0) throw IllegalArgumentException()
        balance += amount
    }
}

The four Kotlin modifiers

`public`	Visible everywhere (the default).
`private`	Visible only inside the same class.
`protected`	Visible in the same class and its subclasses.
`internal`	Visible everywhere in the same module.

For now, focus on public and private.

Your task

The Dog class's name property is now private. Add a fun getName(): String method that returns it.

Dog's name: Rex

STEP 1 OF 2

Guided

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