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You're reading from  Mastering PLC Programming

Product typeBook
Published inMar 2023
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781804612880
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Mason White
Mason White
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Mason White

M.T. White has been programming since the age of 12. His fascination with robotics flourished when he was a child programming microcontrollers such as Arduinos. M.T. currently holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics, a master's degree in soft ware engineering, and is currently working on an MBA in IT project management. M.T. is currently working as a soft ware developer for a major US defense contractor and is an adjunct CIS instructor at ECPI University. His background mostly stems from the automation industry where he programmed PLCs and HMIs for many different types of applications. M.T. has programmed many different brands of PLCs over the years and has developed HMIs using many different tools.
Read more about Mason White

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Understanding the purpose of a getter and setter

Now that we have a property set up, we need to answer a logical question: what are they used for? As stated before, if you have a variable that belongs to a function block, you never want to directly access it. At first glance, this may seem like a convoluted way of doing things; however, the power of a getter method comes in the form of the logic that it contains. Essentially, both getter and setter methods can support logic that can vet how and what’s reading or writing the variable.

Getter method

A getter method is used to read a variable in a function block. For the most part, getters usually have very simple logic. In short, many of the getter methods that I have written in the past (regardless of the language or project that I am working on) are usually methods that simply return a class, function block, or variable.

A basic demonstration for a getter method is reading a variable from the function block we have...

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Mastering PLC Programming
Published in: Mar 2023Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781804612880

Author (1)

author image
Mason White

M.T. White has been programming since the age of 12. His fascination with robotics flourished when he was a child programming microcontrollers such as Arduinos. M.T. currently holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics, a master's degree in soft ware engineering, and is currently working on an MBA in IT project management. M.T. is currently working as a soft ware developer for a major US defense contractor and is an adjunct CIS instructor at ECPI University. His background mostly stems from the automation industry where he programmed PLCs and HMIs for many different types of applications. M.T. has programmed many different brands of PLCs over the years and has developed HMIs using many different tools.
Read more about Mason White