Encapsulating to protect

Earlier in this chapter, we defined encapsulation as the hidden nature of an object's data. Granting access to an object's data via its own accessors and mutators is a great approach to data protection.

We use encapsulation as an approach to data protection in OOP. Encapsulating too much data into a class is an anti-pattern—something that should be avoided. As with the create concise objects approach, we should identify what data all copies of an object have in common and only encapsulate those data elements. Other data might be better suited for an ancillary class.