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javabuilderchaining
Christopher Francisco
Christopher Francisco

Reputation: 16278

Chaining method pattern

Does creating chainable methods make the execution poorly?

I'm talking about this:

public class Foo {
    public Foo bar() {
       // Code
       return this;
    }

    public Foo setBar() {
       // Code
       return this;
    }
}

Foo foo = new Foo();
    foo.bar().setBar();

Is this better than creating a Foo.Builder class and get the Foo object with a Builder.getFoo(); method?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 582

Answers (2)

Karthik T
Karthik T

Reputation: 31952

There are no efficiency concerns in regular java in doing this. The reason to go with a Builder pattern (StringBuilder), etc is because of the way your class functions (immutability of String), which might make certain operations inefficient.

Upvotes: 1

chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic-
chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic-

Reputation: 77206

This sort of pattern, called a fluent interface makes the code much more readable. Unfortunately, the JavaBeans standard, which is very widely used, specifies that setters must have a void return, and returning this can break some tools that expect to match the exact signature. There's a good overview here.

Upvotes: 2

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