Call a public method of a class instance

After you have created an instance of another class, you can call any PUBLIC constructor, method, or destructor defined in the class. If a method returns a value, you can use that value anywhere in your code. Here is the simplified syntax for calling a method of a class:

<ref>:<method>( [ <parameter>][,…]).

Here is the AddEmployee() method of the Dept class. You call the PUBLIC Initialize() method in the Emp class using the reference to the Emp instance. When we call Initialize(), you pass values that match the number and type of parameters defined in the Initialize() method of the Emp class. Note that the values passed into the Initialize() method were passed in to the AddEmployee() method of the Dept class.

method public void AddEmployee (input pEmpNum as integer, 
  input pFirstName as character, 
  input pLastName as character, 
  input pAddress as character, 
  input pPostalCode as character, 
  input pPhones as character extent 3, 
  input pVacationHours as integer, 
  input pJobTitle as character ): 
    define variable Empl as Emp no-undo. Empl = new Emp (). 
	Emp:Initialize(pEmpNum,pFirstName,pLastName,pAddress,
	  pPostalCode, pPhones, pVacationHours, pJobTitle).
	create ttEmployee. 
	assign ttEmployee.FirstName = pFirstName 
	  ttEmployee.LastName = pLastName 
	  ttEmployee.EmpRef = pEmpl 
	  NumEmployees = NumEmployees + 1  . 
	return.
end method.

For more information, see Comparison with procedure-based programming invoking internal procedures.