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<concept xml:lang="en" id="GUID-348E8B54-88D9-5D66-AD11-09131EC387F9"><title>Object Orientation Basics</title><prolog><metadata><keywords/></metadata></prolog><conbody><p>Symbian platform C++ uses the standard object-orientated idioms of encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism and relationships. This page provides a brief summary of these idioms. </p> <section><title>Encapsulation</title> <p>Encapsulation is the art of exposing the aspects of a class that a user can see, but hiding the parts that should not be seen. C++ provides the <codeph>public</codeph> and <codeph>private</codeph> qualifiers to express this: </p> <codeblock id="GUID-078A33E1-511D-53AF-A3EA-E92AF6649153" xml:space="preserve">class TS

    {

public:

    S(T1 aArg1, T2 aArg2);

    void Use(T3 aArg1,    T4 aArg2);

    ~S();

private:

    TInt iInt;

    TText8 iText;

    TReal iReal;

    };</codeblock> <p>Often, functions are public, while data is private. This allows a choice of representations for a class. In practical OO programming, classes often have many private functions. For classes whose representation is a fairly basic property and whose functions would provide direct read/write access to member variables, it is quite acceptable to make data public. </p> </section> <section><title>Inheritance</title> <p>Inheritance is used to express an is-a relationship: for instance, “a button is-a bordered control”. This allows taxonomies of objects to be built up. In C++, inheritance is represented by derivation. </p> <codeblock id="GUID-D8E3EFDD-AF22-5FB1-87EA-4A61BE64A667" xml:space="preserve">class CEikButtonBase : public CEikBorderedControl

    {

    // etc

    };</codeblock> <p>Encapsulation is enhanced by the <codeph>protected</codeph> qualifier, which means effectively <codeph>private</codeph> for non-derived classes, but <codeph>public</codeph> for derived classes. </p> <p>Inheritance is often over-used by designers of object-oriented systems. Inheritance should not be used unless it is natural: for instance, no-one would dispute that a button is a bordered control. But in Smalltalk, a process is an ordered collection. Of what?! In cases like this, it is better for a class to <i>use</i> another class, rather than <i>derive</i> from it. </p> </section> <section><title>Polymorphism</title> <p>Polymorphism builds on inheritance to allow an <keyword>abstract</keyword> base class to be defined, from which <keyword>concrete</keyword> derived classes may inherit. But, these concrete objects may be used without knowing anything about them, other than that they are derived from the abstract base class. </p> <codeblock id="GUID-87BA8309-C6E7-5389-8A87-2BA8536F1B74" xml:space="preserve">Foo(CCoeControl* aControl)

    {

    aControl->Draw();