CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javareturnthis
amolocaleb
amolocaleb

Reputation: 139

When and how to Use "return this" in Java

I'm developing a simple java project to help me master the language and was researching on method chaining when I came across the return this statement. I'm not quite sure of its use cases apart from method chaining and what it means exactly to return this. Its documentation was obviously not written for newbies. Could someone help make it clearer?

Upvotes: 8

Views: 7795

Answers (2)

Bohemian
Bohemian

Reputation: 425208

return this;

returns the instance itself from the method.

Returning the instance is usually (but not always) used when implementing a fluent interface, which allows code to look like this:

myObj.method1().method2().method3();

This in turn is very commonly used (but not required) when implementing the builder pattern.

Upvotes: 15

Ousmane D.
Ousmane D.

Reputation: 56463

return this simply means "return the reference of the current instance".

Upvotes: 1

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