Non-primitive data types

One of the most basic code statements you can write in Java is as follows:

int i = 0;

This declares the variable i with the data type int and a value of 0. Integers are primitive data types, but what happens when we use non-primitive data types like String?

String greeting = "hello";

Not much has changed, except we now use the String data type and pass a String as the value. Let's go further with this. Say we have an example class, LightBulb. How would we use LightBulb as a data type and pass it as a value?

LightBulb light = new LightBulb();

You can see that we are essentially creating a "new" LightBulb to be stored by the variable light.

Client of the class

By creating a "new" object, we are now a client of a class. In the case of the LightBulb class, we are a "client" of the class LightBulb, and must use the methods accordingly.

In previous lessons, we have used the line System.out.println() to print to the console. In this case as well, we are "clients" to the System.out class.

Being a client of a class or another program means that we are able to use parts of code without actually having to know how it works, as long as we know what it does. Take the System.out.println() method: we know that it prints to the console, but it doesn't matter exactly how it does it as long as it does it.

This works the same way for the LightBulb class. Say we can turn our light on and off with the methods turnOn() and turnOff(). We can call these methods like light.turnOn() and we know exactly what they will do, but we don't need to understand how they work in order to use them in our own code.