Introduction to Programming

Software component API

A software component may be a library, an application subsystem, an application layer, or even a single class--something that can be used directly from Java code by invoking its methods. An API of a software component looks like an interface that describes method signatures which can be invoked on the objects of classes that implement the interface. If the component has public static methods (which do not require objects and can be invoked using classes only), these methods have to be included in the API description as well. But for a complete description of the component API, as we have mentioned already in Chapter 2, Java Language Basics, the information about how the objects of the component can be created should ...