Unit 7: Class Fields
After this unit, students should:
- understand the difference between instance fields and class fields
- understand the meaning of keywords
final
andstatic
in the context of a field - be able to define and use a class field
- be able to use
import
to access classes from the Java standard libraries
Class Fields
Let's revisit the following implementation of Circle
.
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In the code above, we use the constant \(\pi\) but hardcoded it as 3.141592653589793. Hardcoding such a magic number is a no-no in terms of coding style. This constant can appear in more than one places. If we hardcode such a number and want to change its precision later, we would need to trace down and change every occurrence. Every time we need to use \(\pi\), we have to remember or look up what is the precision that we use. Not only does this practice introduce more work, it is also likely to introduce bugs.
In C, we define \(\pi\) as a macro constant M_PI
. But how should we do this in Java? This is where the ideal that a program consists of only objects with internal states that communicate with each other can feel a bit constraining. The constant \(\pi\) is universal, and does not really belong to any object (the value of \(\pi\) is the same for every circle!).
Another example is the method sqrt()
that computes the square root of a given number. sqrt
is a general function that is not associated with any object as well.
A solution to this is to associate these global values and functions with a class instead of with an object. For instance. Java predefines a java.lang.Math
class1 that is populated with constants PI
and E
(for Euler's number \(e\)), along with a long list of mathematical functions. To associate a method or a field with a class in Java, we declare them with the static
keyword. We can additionally add a keyword final
to indicate that the value of the field will not change and public
to indicate that the field is accessible from outside the class. In short, the combination of public static final
modifiers is used for constant values in Java.
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We call these static
fields that are associated with a class as class fields, and fields that are associated with an object as instance fields. Note that, a static
class field needs not be final
and it needs not be public
. Class fields are useful for storing pre-computed values or configuration parameters associated with a class rather than individual objects.
Accessing Class Fields
A class field behaves just like a global variable and can be accessed in the code, anywhere the class can be accessed. Since a class field is associated with a class rather than an object, we access it through its class name. To use the static class field PI
, for instance, we have to say java.lang.Math.PI
.
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A more common way, however, is to use import
statements at the top of the program. If we have this line:
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Then, we can save some typing and write:
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Class Fields and Methods in Python
Note that, in Python, any variable declared within a class
block is a class field:
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In the above example, x
and y
are class fields, not instance fields.
Example: The Circle class
Now, let revise our Circle
class to improve the code and make it a little more complete. We now add in comments for each method and variable as well, as we always should.
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The class
Math
is provided by the packagejava.lang
in Java. A package is simply a set of related classes (and interfaces, but I have not told you what is an interface yet). To use this class, we need to add the lineimport java.lang.Math
at the beginning of our program. ↩