Wrapper

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What Does Wrapper Mean?

In the context of software engineering, a wrapper is defined as an entity that encapsulates and hides the underlying complexity of another entity by means of well-defined interfaces.

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Techopedia Explains Wrapper

Patterns and frameworks form an integral component of software engineering. A wrapper pattern is a class with a special interface that allows incompatible classes to work together. Two classes may not be able to perform a data transfer due to the presence of incompatible data access points. For example, if a class accepts a date in DD/MM/YY format from another class that generates a date in MM/DD/YYYY format, neither of the classes can coexist to operate as an integrated module because their data formats are different. The wrapper class solves this problem by converting the data into a compatible format.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.