Encapsulating user input of data for a class (C++)
- by Dr. Monkey
For an assignment I've made a simple C++ program that uses a superclass (Student) and two subclasses (CourseStudent and ResearchStudent) to store a list of students and print out their details, with different details shown for the two different types of students (using overriding of the display() method from Student).
My question is about how the program collects input from the user of things like the student name, ID number, unit and fee information (for a course student) and research information (for research students):
My implementation has the prompting for user input and the collecting of that input handled within the classes themselves. The reasoning behind this was that each class knows what kind of input it needs, so it makes sense to me to have it know how to ask for it (given an ostream through which to ask and an istream to collect the input from).
My lecturer says that the prompting and input should all be handled in the main program, which seems to me somewhat messier, and would make it trickier to extend the program to handle different types of students.
I am considering, as a compromise, to make a helper class that handles the prompting and collection of user input for each type of Student, which could then be called on by the main program. The advantage of this would be that the student classes don't have as much in them (so they're cleaner), but also they can be bundled with the helper classes if the input functionality is required. This also means more classes of Student could be added without having to make major changes to the main program, as long as helper classes are provided for these new classes. Also the helper class could be swapped for an alternative language version without having to make any changes to the class itself.
What are the major advantages and disadvantages of the three different options for user input (fully encapsulated, helper class or in the main program)?
