Improvements to Joshua Bloch's Builder Design Pattern?
- by Jason Fotinatos
Back in 2007, I read an article about Joshua Blochs take on the "builder pattern" and how it could be modified to improve the overuse of constructors and setters, especially when an object has a large number of properties, most of which are optional. A brief summary of this design pattern is articled here [http://rwhansen.blogspot.com/2007/07/theres-builder-pattern-that-joshua.html].
I liked the idea, and have been using it since. The problem with it, while it is very clean and nice to use from the client perspective, implementing it can be a pain in the bum! There are so many different places in the object where a single property is reference, and thus creating the object, and adding a new property takes a lot of time.
So...I had an idea. First, an example object in Joshua Bloch's style:
Josh Bloch Style:
public class OptionsJoshBlochStyle {
private final String option1;
private final int option2;
// ...other options here <<<<
public String getOption1() {
return option1;
}
public int getOption2() {
return option2;
}
public static class Builder {
private String option1;
private int option2;
// other options here <<<<<
public Builder option1(String option1) {
this.option1 = option1;
return this;
}
public Builder option2(int option2) {
this.option2 = option2;
return this;
}
public OptionsJoshBlochStyle build() {
return new OptionsJoshBlochStyle(this);
}
}
private OptionsJoshBlochStyle(Builder builder) {
this.option1 = builder.option1;
this.option2 = builder.option2;
// other options here <<<<<<
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
OptionsJoshBlochStyle optionsVariation1 = new OptionsJoshBlochStyle.Builder().option1("firefox").option2(1).build();
OptionsJoshBlochStyle optionsVariation2 = new OptionsJoshBlochStyle.Builder().option1("chrome").option2(2).build();
}
}
Now my "improved" version:
public class Options {
// note that these are not final
private String option1;
private int option2;
// ...other options here
public String getOption1() {
return option1;
}
public int getOption2() {
return option2;
}
public static class Builder {
private final Options options = new Options();
public Builder option1(String option1) {
this.options.option1 = option1;
return this;
}
public Builder option2(int option2) {
this.options.option2 = option2;
return this;
}
public Options build() {
return options;
}
}
private Options() {
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
Options optionsVariation1 = new Options.Builder().option1("firefox").option2(1).build();
Options optionsVariation2 = new Options.Builder().option1("chrome").option2(2).build();
}
}
As you can see in my "improved version", there are 2 less places in which we need to add code about any addition properties (or options, in this case)! The only negative that I can see is that the instance variables of the outer class are not able to be final. But, the class is still immutable without this.
Is there really any downside to this improvement in maintainability? There has to be a reason which he repeated the properties within the nested class that I'm not seeing?
