Shortcut to generate Getter and Setter in Eclipse

What are Getter and setter methods ?

Getter method is to retrieve the value of instance variable while a setter method is used to set or update the value of instance variable. It is a good practice to access instance variables through these methods instead of directly accessing because we can place some pre-conditions before setting or getting the value of these variables.

Example :- If we have an instance variable as amount and we want that always the ‘amount’ value should be greater than 1000. So we can create a setter method which will only assign value to ‘amount’ if greater than 1000.

class Bank {
    private int amount;
    
    //setter method checking if the amount is greater than 1000
    public String setAmount(int temp){
         if(temp>1000){
               amount=temp;
         }else{
               return "Enter amount greater than 1000";
         }
         return "Saved successfully";
    }
    
    //getter method
    public int getAmount(){
          return amount;
    }
}

If we have ten instance variables in a program then it will be time taking to create getter and setter method for each variable manually. So Eclipse IDE provides a short way to create getter and setter methods on a single click.

Let us see shortcut to create Getter and Setters in Eclipse :

Step 1 : Declare all the variables in the program.

Step 2 : Right click anywhere in the code and select ‘Source‘ and then select ‘Generate Getters and Setters…‘.

Step 3 : Now a dialog box will open. In the dialog box select the variables of which you want to generate Getter and Setter. After selecting variables click on ‘Generate‘ button.

Step 4 : Getter and Setter methods will be created for the selected variables.

Let us now understand an important topic – How to debug code in Eclipse