Always getting a value...

[Niels Basjes]

Hi,

I have a Java project where I'm using Avro as the serialization technology.
I have a deep nested structure and many fields are optional.

Because of the 'random' nature of my application I want to be able to
simply 'set' a value in that tree easily.

So I want to have a setter in my class that looks like this (Assume
myStruct is an instance of the 'root' class generated by Avro):

public void setSomething(String value) {
    myStruct
            .getFoo()
            .getBar()
            .getOne()
            .getOther()
            .setSomething(value);
}

The 'problem' I ran into is that any of the 4 get methods can return a null
value so the code I have to write is really huge.
For every step in this method I have to build null checks and create the
underlying instance if it is null.
I already started writing helper methods to do this for parts of my tree.

To solve this in a way that makes this code readable I came up with the
following which I want to propose to you guys (before I start working on a
patch).

My idea is to generate a new 'get' method in addition to the existing
normal get method for the regular instance of the class.

So in addition to the

public void getFoo() {
    return foo;
}

I propose to generate something like this as well

public void getAlwaysFoo() {
    if (foo == null) {
        setFoo(Foo.newBuilder().build());
    }
    return foo;
}

This way the automatically created instance immediately has all the
defaults I have defined.

Assuming this naming my code will be readable because it will look like
this:
public void setSomething(String value) {
    myStruct
            .getAlwaysFoo()
            .getAlwaysBar()
            .getAlwaysOne()
            .getAlwaysOther()
            .setSomething(value);
}

I can create this same effect in my own project code.
But having this automatically generated by the Avro engine would make life
a lot easier.

Is this an idea you guys would consider to have in the main (Java)
generated code base?
If so, is the 'getAlways' prefix sensible?

-- 
Best regards

Niels Basjes