Hi Gary, Yes, you can make the argument that the user might expect *every* class with a length(), size() or isEmpty() method to be covered by the implementation, but IMO as long as the Javadoc clearly states what is supported and what is not, then it's better to have at least a partial implementation that covers the more common use-cases than nothing at all. I'll be happy to hear what others think about this though.
Regarding your examples: - StringBuffer and StringBuilder are already covered by the current implementation, since they both implement CharSequence. - Buffer - Not sure about this one. Input from others is appreciated here. - File, Path, Clob, Lob, AtomicReference, ZipFile - I doubt that these can be considered common use-cases, but I may be a bit affected by what we need this method for. We have an implementation in our code base that is used for: 1) Ignoring empty fields when serializing objects to YAML and JSON without checking their type. 2) Resolving values of placeholders in a generic way. The types of the objects is still limited to strings, lists and maps, however. Other people may use similar methods for other things, but from what I've seen (in our projects and in Spring), most people use such methods to check "simple" objects like the ones covered in the current implementation. Best regards, Alexander 2018-08-17 19:01 GMT+03:00 Gary Gregory <garydgreg...@gmail.com>: > If we open that Pandora's box, then I want to add: > > - File, empty if length is 0 > - Path, empty if name length is 0 > - Buffer, what? > - StringBuffer > - StringBuilder > - java.sql.Clob > - java.sql.Lob > - The content of an AtomicReference > - ZipFile > - on and on for anything that has a "size()" or "length" or "length()" > > ? > > Gary > > > On Fri, Aug 17, 2018 at 2:43 AM Alexander Tsvetkov < > alexander.tsvetkov...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Hi all, > > > > First of all, apologies if I have messed something up - this is my first > > attempt at contributing to Apache. > > > > With that said, I'd like to propose adding two new methods to Commons > > Lang's ObjectUtils class: > > - isEmpty() > > - isNotEmpty() > > > > These would check whether the object is empty (or not empty respectively) > > based on its type: > > - CharSequence - Considered empty if its length is zero. > > - Array - Considered empty if its length is zero. > > - Collection - Considered empty if it has zero elements. > > - Map - Considered empty if it has zero key-value mappings. > > The object would be considered "not-empty" if its type is not one of the > > types mentioned above. > > > > There is an already existing method that does exactly this in Spring's > > ObjectUtils (see > > > > https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-framework/blob/ > 2ac23badee02697c5eb87c46f955387b32a0d581/spring-core/src/ > main/java/org/springframework/util/ObjectUtils.java#L134 > > ), > > but I think it would be helpful to people (myself and my team included) > if > > there was a similar method in Commons Lang's ObjectUtils. That way we > > wouldn't have to add a dependency to Spring or re-implement the method in > > our code base. > > > > What do you think? > > > > I've opened a JIRA ticket and a GitHub pull request as well: > > https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LANG-1411 > > https://github.com/apache/commons-lang/pull/342 > > > > Best regards, > > Alexander > > >
