Everybody agree about the fact that Java is verbose but yet a great language that is widly used over the industry. The version 8 introduced a lot of stuff that helps developers reduce de verbosity of their code.
Project Lombok
When i start a Java project, the first dependency i take is Lombok. It helps me in so many ways when i am writing my code that it became frustrating to me when i can't find it on the classpath of the project i am working on.
@Log (@CommonLog/@Slf4j/@Log4j/...)
This simple annotation replaces the long line that i keep forgetting :
private static final org.apache.commons.logging.Log log =
org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory.getLog(LogExample.class);
Accessors, Equals and HashCode (@Getter/@Setter)
Lombok can also generate getters, setters, equals and hascode methods :
import lombok.EqualsAndHashCode;
import lombok.Getter;
import lombok.Setter;
@Getter @Setter @EqualsAndHashCode
public class Person {
private String firstName;
private String lastName;
private int age;
private String email;
}
Lombok can be configured to generate chainable (returning this) and fluent accessors so we can write :
Person homer = new Person()
.firstName("Homer")
.lastName("Simpson")
.age(39)
.email("hsimpson@burns-corp.com");
@Builder
If instead of/in addition to the fluent and chainable accessors a Builder is need (useful when all the properties are final... Immutability ) Lombok provides a @Builder annotation that generates a builder so we can use :
Person homer = Person.builder()
.firstName("Homer")
.lastName("Simpson")
.age(39)
.email("hsimpson@burns-corp.com")
.build();
val/var
I don't use these features everywhere but sometimes they can be useful.
val avoids writing the type of a variable by inferring it.
It also declares the variable as final
import lombok.val;
//...
val homer = new Person().firstName("Homer").lastName("Simpson");
var works exactly like val, except the local variable is not declared as final.
More Features
Lombok offers a lot more feature that may be useful:
@Data : a shortcut for @ToString, @EqualsAndHashCode, @Getter and @Setter
Constructors : @NoArgsConstructor, @RequiredArgsConstructor and @AllArgsConstructor
Lombok can be configured using a simple config file lombok.config
Checkout all the features on the website