CS206V: Object Oriented

Programming
(Spring 2024)
Dr. Cao Tien Dung
School of Information Technology – Tan Tao University
The software crisis
• software engineering: The practice of developing,
designing, documenting, testing large computer
programs.

• Large-scale projects face many issues:

• getting many programmers to work together
• getting code finished on time
• avoiding redundant code
• finding and fixing bugs
• maintaining, improving, and reusing existing code

• code reuse: The practice of writing program code

once and using it in many contexts.

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Company scenario
• In company, we have many types of employee:
Marketer, Secretary, Legal secretary, Lawyer.
• Common regulations for each employee:
• Work hour: 40h/week
• Vacation: 12days / year
• Salary: 40 000$/year
• yellow form to apply annual leave
• Each type of employee has some unique behavior.
• Marketers know how to advertise
• Secretaries know how to take dictation
• Legal secretaries know how to prepare legal documents
• Lawyers know how to sue

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Is-a-Relationship, hierarchies
• is-a relationship: A hierarchical connection
where one category can be treated as a
specialized version of another
• Marketer, Secretary, Lawyer are the employees but:
• Marketer gets an extra salary 5000$.
• Lawyer get en extra salary 10000$ and vacation form is
“prink”.
• A Legal secretary is a secretary.
• inheritance hierarchy: A set of classes connected
by is-a relationships that can share common code.
Employee

Marketer Secretary Lawyer

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An Employee class
public class Employee{
public int getWorkHours() {
return 40; //40 hours per week
}
public int getVacationDays() {
return 12; //12 days per year
}
public int getSalary() {
return 40000; //40000$ per year
}
public String getVacationForm() {
return “yellow” //use the yellow form
}
}

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Redundant Marketer class
public class Marketer{
public int getWorkHours() {
return 40; //40 hours per week
}
public int getVacationDays() {
return 12; //12 days per year
}
public int getSalary() {
return 45000; //45000$ per year
}
public String getVacationForm() {
return “yellow” //use the yellow form
}
public void advertise(String adv) {
System.out.println(“Advertise: ” + adv);
}
}

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Share code
advertise is the only unique behavior in Marketer
getSalary is an modification from Employee

• We'd like to be able to say:

public class Marketer{
copy all the content of Employee to here
public int getSalary() { //modify salary
return 45000; //45000$ per year
}
public void advertise(String adv) { //add new function
System.out.println(“Advertise: ” + adv);
}
}

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Inheritance
• inheritance: A way to form new classes based on
existing classes, taking on their
attributes/behavior.
• a way to group related classes
• a way to share code between two or more classes
• One class can extend another, absorbing its
data/behavior.
• superclass: The parent class that is being extended.
• subclass: The child class that extends the superclass
and inherits its behavior.
• Subclass gets a copy of every field and method from superclass

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Inheritance syntax
public class name extends superclass {

• Example:
public class Marketer extends Employee {
...
}
• By extending Employee, each Marketer object now:
• receives a getWorkHours, getSalary, getVacationDays,
and getVacationForm method automatically
• can be treated as an Employee by client code (seen
later)

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Improved Marketer code
// A class to represent marketers.
public class Marketer extends Employee {
//overrides
public int getSalary(){
return 45000;
}
public void advertise(String avd) {
System.out.println(”Advertise: " + adv);
}
}

• Now we only write the parts unique to each type.

• Marketer inherits getWorkHours, getSalary, getVacationDays, and
getVacationForm methods from Employee.
• Maketer modifies the getSalary method.
• Marketer adds the advertise method.

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Levels of inheritance
• Multiple levels of inheritance in a hierarchy are
allowed.
• Example: A legal secretary is the same as a regular
secretary but can file legal briefs.

public class LegalSecretary extends Secretary {

...
}

• Exercise: Complete the Secretary and LegalSecretary

class.

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Interacting with the super-class
• Company now change the common behavior
• The based salary of Employee now is raised to 50,000$, then
Marketers get 55,000$ and Lawyers get 60,000$.
• We must modify our code to reflect this policy
change?
public class Employee {
...
public double getSalary() {
return 50000.0; // $50,000.00 / year
}
...
}
• Are we finished?
• The Employee subclasses are still incorrect.
• They have overridden getSalary to return other values.
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Calling overridden methods
• We modify getSalary of all subclass ? YES, BUT:
• Problem: The subclasses' salaries are based on the Employee salary, but the
getSalary code does not reflect this.

• Subclasses can call overridden methods with super

super.method(parameters)
• Example:
public class Marketer extends Employee{
public double getSalary() {
double baseSalary = super.getSalary();
return baseSalary + 5000.0;
}
...
}

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Inheritance and constructors
• Imagine that we want to give employees more vacation
days the longer they've been with the company.
• For each year worked, we'll award 2 additional vacation
days.
• When an Employee object is constructed, we'll pass in the
number of years the person has been with the company.
• This will require us to modify our Employee class and add
some new state and behavior.
• Exercise: Make necessary modifications to the Employee
class.

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Modified Employee class
public class Employee { public int getVacationDays() {
return 10 + 2 * years;
private int years;
}
public Employee(int initialYears) { public String getVacationForm() {
years = initialYears; return "yellow";
} }
}
public int getHours() {
return 40;
}
public double getSalary() {
return 50000.0;
}

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Problem with constructors
• Now that we've added the constructor to the Employee
class, our subclasses do not compile. The error:
Lawyer.java:2: cannot find symbol
symbol : constructor Employee()
location: class Employee
public class Lawyer extends Employee {
^

• The short explanation: Once we write a constructor (that

requires parameters) in the superclass, we must now write
constructors for our employee subclasses as well.

• The long explanation: (next slide)

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The detailed explanation
• Constructors are not inherited.
• Subclasses don't inherit the Employee(int) constructor.
• Subclasses receive a default constructor that contains:
public Lawyer() {
super(); // calls Employee() constructor
}

• But our Employee(int) replaces the default

Employee().
• The subclasses' default constructors are now trying to
call a non-existent default Employee constructor.

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Calling superclass constructor
super(parameters);
• Example:
public class Lawyer extends Employee {
public Lawyer(int years) {
super(years); // calls Employee constructor
}
...
}
• The super call must be the first statement in the
constructor.

• Exercise: Make a similar modification to the

Marketer class.
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Inheritance and fields
• Try to give lawyers $10000 for each year at the company:
public class Lawyer extends Employee {
...
public double getSalary() {
return super.getSalary() + 10000 * years;
}
...
}
• Does not work; the error is the following:
Lawyer.java:7: years has private access in Employee
return super.getSalary() + 10000 * years;
^

• Private fields cannot be directly accessed from

subclasses.
• One reason: So that subclassing can't break encapsulation.
• How can we get around this limitation?

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Improved Employee code
• Add an accessor for any field needed by the
subclass.
public class Employee {
private int years;
public Employee(int initialYears) {
years = initialYears;
}
public int getYears() { return years; }
...
}
public class Lawyer extends Employee {
public Lawyer(int years) {
super(years);
}
public double getSalary() {
return super.getSalary() + 10000 * getYears();
}
...
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Excercise
• Auto Showroom case study
• Vehicle
Vehicle Customer
• Car (sedan, SUV, van) buy

• Truck
order
• Customer
approve
• Individual sale

• Enterprise
• Employee Saler Manager
• Saler
• Manager

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