Learning C++ - a design pattern for your first class

From today's C++ Course - a new, clear example of a design pattern for a simple class, its headers, and a test harness - [here].

When using an Object Oriented language, design patterns are really useful. Essentially, they're a known and standard way of combining the features of the language in a convenstional way. By using a design pattern, you're going to be writing along the same lines as others have written before, so you'll:
• avoid some common code pitfalls
• find it easier to write your code as it will be familiar
• produce code that's easy for others to pick up and follow later on

My "SimpleClass" design pattern (as I've chosen to call it) shows a class definition, definition of each of the members, and definition of a calling program. It's very much a starting point within the course, and I went on after this example to add:
• private access for member variables, and public accessor functions
• use of this rather than using different names in the constructor
• multiple methods of the same name (I provided several constructors)

Going one stage further, I divided the code into three separate files:
• a header file which defines the API to the class - [here]
• a file which defines all the methods within the class - [here]
• and the test harness - [here].

This is becoming a much more realistic use of a class - with the test program being separated from the detail of how the class works, and the header file in a third place and shared betweenthe two program files we already have, and other programs which choose to make use of our class.

Completing this example - compile and run:

  munchkin:rcpp grahamellis$ g++ -o tabby table.cpp tabletest.cpp

  munchkin:rcpp grahamellis$ ./tabby

  Size of table 1.8

  1200

  Size of table 3.38

  munchkin:rcpp grahamellis$

We offer three different C++ courses - for delegates who haven't programmed before (5 days), for delegates who have programmed before, but not in C (4 days), and for delegates who have prior programming experience in C. See [here]. A public course series ran last week, and the next public course series runs in mid-July - already booking well, but there are still spaces left at all levels. We run private courses as required for single customer groups; as I write, just one week is available in May and you would then be looking forward several months ...
(written 2012-05-02, updated 2012-05-05) 235a

Associated topics are indexed under

C232 - C and C based languages - Defining and using classes in C++
  [3978] Teaching OO - how to avoid lots of window switching early on - (2013-01-17)
  [3810] Reading files, and using factories to create vectors of objects from the data in C++ - (2012-07-21)
  [3721] Naming blocks of code, structures and Object Orientation - efficient coding in manageable chunks - (2012-05-06)
  [3250] C++ - how we teach the language and the concepts behind the language - (2011-04-17)
  [2579] Creating, setting up and using objects in C++ - (2010-01-16)
  [2578] Where are your objects stored in C++? - (2010-01-16)
  [2577] Complete teaching example - C++, inheritance, polymorphism - (2010-01-15)
  [1925] Introduction to Object Oriented Programming - (2008-12-06)

Q908 - Object Orientation and General technical topics - Object Orientation: Design Patterns
  [4021] Spike solution, refactored and reusable, Python - Example - (2013-02-28)
  [3843] Caching Design Patterns - (2012-08-20)
  [3608] Design Patterns - what are they? Why use them? - (2012-02-12)
  [2977] What is a factory method and why use one? - Example in Ruby - (2010-09-30)
  [2741] What is a factory? - (2010-04-26)
  [2322] Looking for a practical standards course - (2009-08-05)
  [1224] Object Relation Mapping (ORM) - (2007-06-09)
  [485] North, Norther and Northest - PHP 5 Objects - (2005-11-04)

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