Java All-in-One For Dummies, 5th Edition

Chapter 2

Making Your Own Classes

IN THIS CHAPTER

Creating your own class

Looking at the pieces of a class declaration

Finding out about class fields

Constructing constructors

Adding methods to your classes

Using the this keyword

Okay, class, it’s time to learn how to create your own classes.

In this chapter, you discover the basics of creating classes in Java. All Java programs are classes, so you’ve already seen many examples of classes. You’ve seen class headers such as public class GuessingGame and static methods such as public static void main. Now, in this chapter, I show you how to create programs that have more than one class.

Declaring a Class

All classes must be defined by a class declaration — lines of code that provide the name for the class and the body of the class. Here’s the most basic form of a class declaration:

[public] class ClassName {class-body}

The public