Difference between encapsulation and abstraction

Question

Hi Can anybody tell me what the difference between Encapsulation and Abstraction? I have read many articles on it but don't make much sense to me. Please give me real life example not just the theory. Thanks a lot in advance.

Sujeet Suman · Answer

Pooja I think there are many conversations posts blogs & articles written on Abstraction & Encapsulation difference. But very few places people cleared the things. Abstraction : - Showing only abstract model or hiding implementation complexity to user. No need to show complete implementation. Like ABSTRACT class/method and INTERFACE. Encapsulation : - It is keeping data & function in a container called class so that we can maintain the accessibility of class/method/property through different access modifiers. Like using PUBLIC/PRIVATE/PROTECTED/INTERNAL. If this is helpful for you then please accept my Answer .

Pooja Sharma · Answer

Thanks for your reply Prasant. Do you mean abstraction is for outside the world and encapsulation is for the developers itself? I mean developer breaks down the big problem into multiple methods with the help of design pattern or architecture. This is called encapsulation. Through Abstraction we just show essential feature or method to the user of our class and hide the implementation.

Prasant Jinaga · Answer

Encapsulation is an internal hiding of complexity that entails breaking things into simple well-named functions and other means of simplifying code from an internal perspective. Abstraction is the external hiding of that complexity. This is largely accomplished through hiding internal methods and only exposing the minimum set of tools the user needs to accomplish the task. Like when you drive a car you know what the gas pedal does but you may not know the process behind it because it is encapsulated. Let me give an example in C#. Suppose you have an integer: int Number = 5; string aStrNumber = Number.ToString(); you can use a method like Number.ToString() which returns you characters representation of the number 5 and stores that in a string object. The method tells you what it does instead of how it does it. encapsulation puts some things in a box and gives you a peephole; this keeps you from mucking with the gears. abstraction flat-out ignores the details that don't matter like whether the things have gears ratchets flywheels or nuclear cores; they just go