CMP CMP4266

Computer Programming UG1

Lecture – 6

(Based on Gaddis, T., Starting out with Python 3e, Pearson Education)

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Next – The coding challenge

 You will be given 48 hours to complete coding tasks on

Moodle.
 This is based on the Labs 1,2,3,4,5 and 6, so to do well in the
coding challenge you need to complete all previous labs.
 It should be submitted within 48 hours, else, typical penalties
for late submission will be applied.
 After completing the challenge, you need to complete a
verification process with your personal tutor which includes:
– Making sure labs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 have been submitted
– Explain your code to your personal tutor
 When the coding challenge is on, no tutor or a demonstrator will give
you any help or support in relation to the challenge or any relevant lab
exercises.

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Outline

 Procedural and Object-Oriented Programming

 Classes

 Designing Classes in UML

 Class Definition & Class Instance

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Procedural Programming

 Procedural programming: writing programs made of functions

that perform specific tasks

– Procedures typically operate on data items that are separate from the
procedures

– Data items commonly passed from one procedure to another

– Focus: to create procedures that operate on the program’s data

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Object-Oriented Programming

 Object-oriented programming: focused on creating objects

 Object:

– In reality: a tangible thing that we may touch, feel and manipulate

– In software development: a model of a tangible thing that contains

- data: to represent different characteristics of the tangible thing

- associate behaviors (procedures): to manipulate the data of the tangible

thing.

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Object-Oriented Programming? Why?

 Data Types in Python :

– Float
– String
– Integer
Good when used for procedural operation e.g.
Value = 3.2 * 5
But how can a variable hold all data needed to represent a Customer,
Student or Bank Account.
Using variables ?? E.g.

Customer = “ email address = customer@info.uk, address, city, Gender,

Credit card number, bank details, shopping basket, purchased items, ……etc.”
Student = [first name, last name, modules, degree, address, bank details, etc.]

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Procedural vs Object-Oriented Programming

 Find the area and perimeter of a thin rectangular plate

Passing data when

procedures are called

No need to pass data when

procedures are called on objects

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Object Oriented Programming – No restriction

 In OOP, everything is object.

 Objects are anything that you can give a noun too.
 Eg. TV, Lamp and glass of water.
 In reality objects are designed with the clear purpose, but
they are not limited in the way they can interact with one
another.
 For example,
– The lamp is used to provide sufficient light for reading a
book
– Use the glass of water to drink
– Dump the water on the book

 Interactions between the world’s objects are limited with

our imagination rather than the object limitations.

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Object Oriented Programming

 Object-oriented programming is
centered on creating objects rather Object
than procedures.
Attributes (data)

 Objects are a melding of data and

procedures that manipulate that
data.

 Data in an object are known as

attributes.

 Procedures in an object are known

as methods. Methods
(behaviors / procedures)

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Object Oriented Programming
 Object-oriented programming
combines data and behavior
via encapsulation. Object
 Data hiding is the ability of an Programming Attributes (data)
Interface typically private to this object
object to hide data from other
objects in the program.
 Only an objects methods
should be able to directly
manipulate its attributes.
 Other objects are allowed
manipulate an object’s Other
attributes via the object’s objects
methods.
 This indirect access is known
as a programming interface.
Methods
(behaviors / procedures)

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Object-Oriented Programming

 Data attributes: define the state of an object

– Example: clock object would have second, minute, and hour data
attributes

 Public methods: allow external code to manipulate the object

– Example: set_time, set_alarm_time

 Private methods: used for object’s inner workings

def clock_inner_operation():
for hours in range(24):
for minutes in range(60):
for seconds in range(60):
print(hours, ':', minutes, ':', seconds)

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Classes

 Class: code that specifies the data attributes and methods of a

particular type of object
– Similar to a blueprint of a house or a cookie cutter

 Instance: an object created according to a class definition

– Similar to a specific house built according to the blueprint or a specific
cookie
– There can be many instances of one class

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Object Oriented Design and Programming

 Object Oriented Design

– Is a systematic process to think about how software systems are
composed of interacting objects
- identify the objects
- Identify attributes and methods of each object
- How the objects are connected to each other
– Output of object oriented design is an implementation specification

 Object Oriented Programming

– Is the process of converting the implementation specification into a working
program

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Object Oriented Design Specification

 Unified Modelling Language (UML) is a very popular language that is used

to specify object oriented design.
– It offers different types of diagrams to specify OOD.
– Classes (i.e. objects) of a software system and the relationships among the classes can
be described using UML class diagram

 In UML classes are represented as a box with three sections

– Top section displays the name of the class

– Middle section lists the data attributes

– Bottom section lists the methods of the class

– A minus (-) sign in front of an attribute (or method) signifies private attribute (or method)
– A plus (+) sign in front of an attribute (or method) signifies a public attribute (or method)
– Simple relation (known as association) between two classes is represented by solid lines

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Object Oriented Design Specification

 When developing object oriented program, first goal is to identify

classes
– Typically involves identifying the real-world objects that are in the
problem
– Technique for identifying classes:
A customer uses a bank ATM to check balance
- Get written description of the problem domain
of his/her bank account,
- Identify all nouns in the description, each of which is a potential class
deposit funds,
- Refine the list to withdraw
include only cash
classesand/or
that are transfer
relevant to funds
the problem

 To find out a class’s responsibilities look at the problem domain. A

classes responsibilities are:
– The things the class is responsible for knowing
- Identifying these helps identify the class’s data attributes
– The actions the class is responsible for doing
- Identifying these helps identify the class’s methods 

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Object Oriented Design Specification (Example)

 Consider a Banking System.

– The most obvious objects would be i) Bank Account and ii) Customer
– Each customer should be connected to a bank account
– Identify attributes and methods for each object

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Class Definitions in Python

 Class definition: set of statements that define a class’s methods and data
attributes
– Format: begin with class Class_name:
- Class names often start with uppercase letter
– Method definition like any other python function definition
- self parameter: required in every method in the class – references
the specific object that the method is working on
 Initializer method: automatically executed when an instance of the class is
created
– Initializes object’s data attributes and assigns self parameter to the
object that was just created
– Format: def __init__ (self):
 Class methods can have multiple parameters in addition to self

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Class Definitions (Example)

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Class Instance

 Classes can be stored in modules

– Filename for module must end in .py
– Module can be imported to programs that use the class

 To create a new instance of a class call the initializer method

– Format: My_instance = Class_Name()

 To call any of the class methods using the created instance,

use dot notation
– Format: My_instance.method()
– Because the self parameter references the specific instance of the
object, the method will affect this instance
- Reference to self is passed automatically

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Class Instance (Example)

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Class Definitions

 Object’s state: the values of the object’s attribute at a given

moment
 __str__ method: displays the object’s state
– Automatically called when the object is passed as an argument to the
print function
– Automatically called when the object is passed as an argument to the
str function

 Instance attribute: belongs to a specific instance of a class

– Created when a method uses the self parameter to create an attribute

 If many instances of a class are created, each would have its

own set of attributes

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Accessor and Mutator Methods

 An object’s data attributes should be private

– To make sure of this, place two underscores (__) in front of attribute
name
- Example: __current_minute

 Typically, all of a class’s data attributes are private and provide

methods to access and change them

 Accessor methods: return a value from a class’s attribute

without changing it
– Safe way for code outside the class to retrieve the value of attributes

 Mutator methods: store or change the value of a data attribute

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.
Class Example

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Implementing Association (1)

 For a banking system, we have

– BankAccount and Customer objects
– Each customer should be connected to a bank account

 How to implement this?

• Association is generally implemented by making one object as attribute of the
other object.

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Implementing Association (2)

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Implementing Association (3)

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Implementing Association (4)

CMP4266, School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

6.1 Exercise: Identify the class, its attributes and
methods from a scenario (15 - 20 minutes)
In-class
Exercise
 Create a software that can calculate energy consumption
and running cost of home appliances.
 To create an object, you need to pass 3 arguments through
its __init__ method, and to be stored as the class attributes,
and these are appliance name, power consumption in
watts, the number of hours the device is being used per
day.
 The class should have the following methods;
 print appliance details
 Calculate energy consumption per month in kWh;
 Calclate monthly running cost.
– Note, you need to provide this method with electricity rate per kWh
to calculate the running cost. E.g. £0.10 per kWh

CMP4266 , School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.

Exercise 6.1: Identify the class, its attributes and
methods from a scenario (continued)
In-class
Notes: Exercise

• To calculate the energy consumption of the appliance per month

in kWh use the formula ((Watts * hours)/1000)*30

• To calculate the running cost per month ( in kWh) you should use
the formula (electricity rate * energy consumption).
Example:
A refrigerator consumes 300 watts and is used for 24
hours per day, and the energy cost is £0.10 per kWh. To
calculate its running cost per month you need to do the
following:
Monthly consumption (kWh) = ((300*24)/1000) * 30
Monthly cost (£)= Monthly consumption (kWh) * £0.10
From above the refrigerator cost £21.60 per month.
CMP4266 , School of CS & DT, Birmingham City University.