C# OOP Principles
A key concept in software development is object-oriented programming, or OOP, and C# is made to be a language that is genuinely object-oriented. The core of object-oriented programming (OOP) is “objects,” which are data structures made up of data fields, methods, and their interactions, as opposed to “actions” or reasoning. By modelling real-world issues in a clear and understandable way, this method seeks to speed up the development of complicated software, facilitate code reuse, and make maintenance easier.
Often called the “pillars” or “building blocks” of OOP, the fundamental ideas of the framework are:
- Abstraction
- Polymorphism
- Inheritance
- Encapsulation
Below is a description of each principle accompanied by examples:
Encapsulation
The process of preventing outsiders access to an object’s internal details and unnecessary data is known as encapsulation. This implies that an object’s functions (methods) are the sole ways to access or change its data (attributes or fields). Encapsulation helps build new levels of abstraction and shields data from unintentional alteration by external processes. Through properties and access modifiers, C# facilitates encapsulation.
How to do that in C#: Access modifiers like private, public, protected, and internal are used in C# to specify the range of types and their members. Only members of their own class can access private members, who are subject to severe restrictions. A crucial feature of C# is properties, which combine elements of fields and methods to enable controlled access to private fields. You can enforce data access rules by making one of a property’s get and set accessors (which read and write values, respectively) public and private.
Inheritance
The creation of a new class from an existing class by inheritance enables the new class (subclass, child class, or derived class) to inherit all of the original class’s characteristics and behaviours (superclass, parent class, or base class). Code reuse is its main benefit since common features are defined once in a base class and then expanded upon or specialised in derived classes. As a result, code is easier to maintain, less repetitious, and more elegant.
How to do that in C#: A class in C# can use the colon (:) operator to inherit straight from one parent class. Inheritance at one or more levels is directly supported in C#. In C#, every class either explicitly or indirectly descends from the fundamental class Object.
Polymorphism
The word polymorphism, which comes from Greek and means “one name, many forms,” is a fundamental idea that enables an object to have multiple forms or an operation to behave differently depending on the context. It allows programmers to call methods on derived class objects uniformly and treat them as if they were base class objects, allowing the type of object to determine the unique implementation at runtime. This idea increases the extensibility of systems and helps avoid complicated conditional if statements.
How to do that in C#: The two main ways that C# accomplishes polymorphism are method overloading (static polymorphism) and method overriding (dynamic polymorphism). Dynamic polymorphism depends on virtual methods in a base class and override methods in derived classes, which enable derived classes to implement a method inherited from a base class in their own way.
Abstraction
Abstraction is the idea of displaying only the most important aspects and pertinent information while concealing intricate implementation or background information. It emphasises “what” an object accomplishes as opposed to “how” it does it. By offering a higher-level perspective, this makes controlling and comprehending complicated systems easier.
How to do that in C#: Abstract classes and interfaces allow for abstraction in C#.
- A class that is not immediately instantiable that is, one that cannot have objects created for it is called an abstract class. It may include normal methods as well as abstract methods (methods without implementation). An abstract class’s subclasses have to override all of its abstract methods.
- An interface establishes a contract, which is a collection of properties and method signatures that a class must follow if it “implements” the interface. Without supplying any implementation specifics, interfaces define “what” a class should be able to perform. There are several interfaces that a class can implement.
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