Java Illuminated, 5th Edition

3.2 Creating Objects Using Constructors

A class describes a generic template for creating, or instantiating, objects. In fact, an object must be instantiated before it can be used. To understand how to instantiate an object of a class and how to call methods of the class, we must know the API of a class, which the creators of the class make public. Table 3.1 shows the API of the SimpleDate class, written by the authors of this text.

TABLE 3.1 The SimpleDate Class API

SimpleDate Class Constructor Summary
SimpleDate( ) creates a SimpleDate object with initial default values of 1, 1, 2000. SimpleDate( int mm, int dd, int yy ) creates a SimpleDate object with the initial values of mm, dd, and yy.
SimpleDate Class Method Summary ...