Encapsulation Vs Plain

Question

Why should I use encapsulation if the code below will produce the same result?

The main benefit of encapsulation is the ability to mo

Answer 1

Encapsulation is the technique of making the fields in a class private and providing access to the fields via public methods.

public class Person {

private String name;
private Date dob;
private transient Integer age;

public String getName() {
    return name;
}

public void setName(String name) {
    this.name = name;
}

public Date getDob() {
    return dob;
}

public void setDob(Date dob) {
    this.dob = dob;
}

public int getAge() {
    if (age == null) {
        Calendar dob_cal = Calendar.getInstance();
        dob_cal.setTime(dob);
        Calendar today = Calendar.getInstance();
        age = today.get(Calendar.YEAR) - dob_cal.get(Calendar.YEAR);
        if (today.get(Calendar.MONTH) < dob_cal.get(Calendar.MONTH)) {
            age--;
        } else if (today.get(Calendar.MONTH) == dob_cal.get(Calendar.MONTH)
                && today.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH) < dob_cal.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH)) {
            age--;
        }
    }
    return age;
  }
}

Method getAge() returns you the persons age and you need not bother about how it is implemented and you need not calculate age outside the class.