Encapsulation

Encapsulation advances the benefits of modularity and hiding away of complexities in order to better maintain and reason about code. It is one of the four principles of object-oriented programming (OOP).

Most of the time encapsulation can be achieved by creating classes with an overarching design structure that includes private and public methods (or getters and setters) for our systems to interact.

Python Example

In the following Python example, a Robot class is created with a __version property, initialized as a number. Getter and setter methods are made to allow any instance of Robot to be set with a __version and have it changed later]:

class Robot(object):
 def __init__(self):
   self.__version = 22

 def getVersion(self):
   print(self.__version)

 def setVersion(self, version):
   self.__version = version

obj = Robot()

obj.getVersion()
obj.setVersion(23)
obj.getVersion()

print(obj.__version)