Encapsulation

Encapsulation basically means the binding of attributes and behaviors. The idea is to keep the properties and behavior of an object in one place, so that it is easy to maintain and extend. Encapsulation also provides a mechanism to hide unnecessary details from the user. In Java, we can provide access specifiers to methods and attributes to manage what is visible to a user of the class, and what is hidden.

Encapsulation is one of the fundamental principles of object-oriented languages. It helps in the decoupling of different modules. Decoupled modules can be developed and maintained more or less independently. The technique through which decoupled modules/classes/code are changed internally without affecting their external exposed behavior is called code refactoring.