Don’t Be Afraid of Procedural Java

Consider this simple parsing class:

public class Parser {

  private String s;

  public Parser(String s) {
    this.s = s;
  }

  public Result parse() {
    ...
  }

  // other private methods
}

A typical usage might be:

String toParse = ...
Parser parser = new Parser(toParse);
Result result = parser.parse();

Since the instance is only used to call a single method and then discarded, we can rewrite as:

String toParse = ...
Result result = new Parser(toParse).parse();

Since the class doesn't implement any interfaces and is unlikely to be subclassed - it's a utility class - it's pretty clear that there's no need for the class to maintain state, and that there's no need to be instantiable. The method(s) should be static:

String toParse = ...
Result result = Parser.parse(toParse);

Now this doesn't feel like OO programming, and that's fine. Object-oriented code is very appropriate for many tasks but sometimes you just need to call a global method.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 at 12:18am and is filed under java. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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