Confused with Java Encapsulation Concept

Question

Good day!

I am reading a Java book about encapsulation and it mentioned the getter and setter method.

I\'ve read that to hide the attributes, I must mark my

Answer 1

The idea of private class members (attributes, fields) is to access them directly inside the declaring class (not instance!) only. All other classes will have to use other accessors, for example getter and setter methods. So the way how the AdressBookEntry stores the name, address, telNo and email values, is perfectly hidden inside the class.

You don't have to use getters or setters, although, sometimes there are good reasons to do so inside the class too. Using getters and setters sometimes makes sense if you do some logging or validating before a value is set.