Oops,
That should be
public Foo getFoo()
and
public Foo getAlwaysFoo()
ofcourse
On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 6:28 PM, Niels Basjes <ni...@basjes.nl> wrote:
> 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
>
--
Best regards / Met vriendelijke groeten,
Niels Basjes
