I am about to implement a API for my TCP/IP server written in Java. Right now I have a temporary method that takes a String, executes a command based on the String and returns a String basically like the following. public void communicate(BufferedReader in, PrintWriter out) { while(true) { out.println(handleCommand(in.readLine())); } } private String handleCommand(String command) { if (command.equals("command1") { // do stuff return "Command 1 executed"; } else if (command.equals("command2") { // do some other stuff return "Command 2 executed"; } } I really want to do something more extensible, smarter and stateful, so I could handle more complex and stateful commands and without the method/class getting bloated. How would you start? Suggestions, ideas, or links for further reading are very welcome.