Java Garage

What Is a Class?

A class typically represents a type of thing in the world of the application. You define a class, and in it write code that represents two things: the properties of that type of thing and how it behaves. You might think of classes as categories. For instance, Person is a category or type of thing in the world. To make a class, you simply open your editor, type the keywords public class, and give it a name. Save that file with a .java extension and compile it using the javac command that comes with the SDK.

We can make a class called Person like this:

public class Person { }

If you type the preceding code into a text file called Person.java, it will compile. However, it is obviously useless, because it doesn't hold any data, ...