What is a Class?

Hi Hariidaran Tamilmaran,

a class in Java is like a Blueprint of an object. A class describes how this object should behave and what for kind of attributes it has.

Let's say I want to create a class for a car. I know it has a name, a color, 3 or 5 doors and so on. These properties don't define the behavior of my car, thus you would add those as variables in the class and not as methods, for expample:

public class Car {
   String color;
   String name;
   int doors;
}

The car can start, you should be able to break and so on. Those properties describe the behavior and would be added as methods to the class:

public class Car {
   String color;
   String name;
   int doors;

   public void startTheCar() {
     // Do something
   }

   public void pressTheBreak() {
     // Do something
   }
}

Now you can take this class (the blueprint) and create a real object of it:

public static void main(String [] args) {
   Car bmw = new car();
   bmw.name = "bmw";
   bmw.color = "black";
   bmw.doors = 5;

   bmw.start()
}

Hope that made it a little bit more clear for you. If you still have questions, please don't hesistate to ask mate.