Blocks in Java Lang

We all love blocks in Ruby. Wouldn’t it be great if Java Lang had support for blocks? Well, Java Lang will support blocks/lambdas in jdk8, but in a limited way.

Until you get a chance to work with jdk8 for real blocks/lambdas, there is an old trick we can apply while creating/initializing an object. That is called the less known “Double Brace Initialization” java idiom. This just works for creating/initializing an object. You can’t apply this idiom in other places like you would in Ruby. But, this trick works in all the version of java as well including java 1.2

Let’s say you have the following class and want to create a list of valid order statuses:

OrderStatus.java

public class OrderStatus {
    private String code;
    private String description;
 
    OrderStatus(String code, String description) {
        this.code = code;
        this.description = description;
    }
 
    public OrderStatus() {
    }
 
    String getCode() {
        return code;
    }
 
    void setCode(String code) {
        this.code = code;
    }
 
    String getDescription() {
        return description;
    }
 
    void setDescription(String description) {
        this.description = description;
    }
 
 
    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object o) {
        if (this == o) {
            return true;
        }
        if (o == null || getClass() != o.getClass()) {
            return false;
        }
 
        OrderStatus that = (OrderStatus) o;
 
        if (code != null ? !code.equals(that.code) : that.code != null) {
            return false;
        }
        if (description != null ? !description.equals(that.description) : that.description != null) {
            return false;
        }
 
        return true;
    }
 
    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        int result = code != null ? code.hashCode() : 0;
        result = 31 * result + (description != null ? description.hashCode() : 0);
        return result;
    }
}

First you would create something like this:

final static Set<OrderStatus> VALID_ORDER_STATUSES = new HashSet<OrderStatus>();

And you would create a static block and add the valid order statuses:

static {
    VALID_ORDER_STATUSES.add(new OrderStatus("01", "Order Placed"));
    VALID_ORDER_STATUSES.add(new OrderStatus("02", "Order Processed"));
    VALID_ORDER_STATUSES.add(new OrderStatus("03", "Order Cancelled"));
    VALID_ORDER_STATUSES.add(new OrderStatus("04", "Order Failed"));
}

Wouldn’t be great if we can combine into one step? Well, we can do by using Double Brace Initialization. Let’s see how it would look:

final static Set<OrderStatus> VALID_ORDER_STATUSES_WITH_DOUBLE_BRACE = new HashSet<OrderStatus>() { {
        tadd(new OrderStatus("01", "Order Placed"));
        tadd(new OrderStatus("02", "Order Processed"));
        tadd(new OrderStatus("03", "Order Cancelled"));
        tadd(new OrderStatus("04", "Order Failed"));
        } };

This code is completely valid and works in all versions of java. You may wonder what is going on here.

The first brace creates an anonymous inner/subclass that extends HashSet and the second one declares instance initializer. The inner class doesn’t add new instance variables, but it contains an initializer block.

Let’s see how we can apply this trick while creating OrderStatus with the default constructor, not using two params constructor.

private static OrderStatus INVALID_ORDER_STATUS = new OrderStatus() { {
        setCode("XX");
        setDescription("Invalid");
        } };

You have to note that if you create a new object with the same order status code and description is not exactly equal to the one you created.

The condition would be false in equals() methods:

if (o == null || getClass() != o.getClass()) {
        return false;
}

Let’s say you are creating a new:

private static OrderStatus INVALID_ORDER_STATUS = new OrderStatus() { {
        setCode("XX");
        setDescription("Invalid");
        } };

private static OrderStatus INVALID_ORDER_STATUS_2 = new OrderStatus() { {
        setCode("XX");
        setDescription("Invalid");
        } };

INVALID_ORDER_STATUS.equals(INVALID_ORDER_STATUS_2) and INVALID_ORDER_STATUS.equals(INVALID_ORDER_STATUS_3) will return false, because it has different anonymous class.

Collection classes should be fine if you create objects like the one we created. VALID_ORDER_STATUSES_WITH_DOUBLE_BRACE.contains(new OrderStatus("01", "Order Placed")) will return true.

You can use the same trick, if you want to call some methods just after creating an object like this:

Action action = new Action() { {
        step1();
        step2();
        } };
String result = action.result();
System.out.println("action result = " + result);

And, you can use this idiom while passing object as a parameter.

valideOrderStatues(new HashSet<OrderStatus>() { {
                    add(new OrderStatus("01", "Order Placed"));
                    add(new OrderStatus("02", "Order Processed"));
                    add(new OrderStatus("03", "Order Cancelled"));
                    add(new OrderStatus("04", "Order Failed"));
            } });

It just makes your code more concise. Try to use wherever it makes sense. All the code is in github.