What is encapsulation in c sharp?

Answer 1

I think the question should be modified as "What is the encapsulation in Object-Oriented programming?" instead of in C#.

C# itself is not encapsulated. It supports OO programming, and encapsulation is one of the main characteristics of OO programming".

The encapsulation in plain English is to hide a piece of information (data) or behavior (the code) within the object itself. Outside of the object should not and cannot know about it.

For instance, let's say you want to add 1 to a property of an object:

Person me = new Person();

me.Wallet.Content += 1;

The above shows the traditional way of adding 1 to the content of my wallet. But if you examine the code carefully, it was like:

"give me all the contents in your wallet, I'll add 1 to those, then put the new contents back in". There is no encapsulation in that code segment.

Person me = new Person();

me.AddToWalletContent(1);

The above code segment shows a way of encapsulation. Noted that there is no property of Wallet, no property of Content of a Wallet directly being seen here.

That's the encapsulation in a nut shell.

How the object me (an instance of Person) implements AddToWalletContent(int aNumber) is not the concern of the consumer, and the consumer has no knowledge (does not know, and should not know) about the person has a wallet or not, and if he does, what the contents were before adding 1 to them.

I hope the above examples shed some lights about encapsulation in OO.