The GenericBuilder

The idea for building mutable objects (immutable objects are addressed later on) is to use method references to setters of the instance that should be built. This leads us to a generic builder that is capable of building every POJO with a default constructor – one builder to rule them all 😉

The implementation is this:

public class GenericBuilder<T> {

    private final Supplier<T> instantiator;

    private List<Consumer<T>> instanceModifiers = new ArrayList<>();

    public GenericBuilder(Supplier<T> instantiator) {
        this.instantiator = instantiator;
    }

    public static <T> GenericBuilder<T> of(Supplier<T> instantiator) {
        return new GenericBuilder<T>(instantiator);
    }

    public <U> GenericBuilder<T> with(BiConsumer<T, U> consumer, U value) {
        Consumer<T> c = instance -> consumer.accept(instance, value);
        instanceModifiers.add(c);
        return this;
    }

    public T build() {
        T value = instantiator.get();
        instanceModifiers.forEach(modifier -> modifier.accept(value));
        instanceModifiers.clear();
        return value;
    }
}

The builder is constructed with a supplier that creates new instances and then those instances are modified by the modifications specified with the with method.

The GenericBuilder would be used for Person like this:

Person value = GenericBuilder.of(Person::new)
            .with(Person::setName, "Otto").with(Person::setAge, 5).build();

Properties and further Usages

But there is more about that builder to discover.

For example, the above implementation clears the modifiers. This could be moved into its own method. Therefore, the builder would keep its state between modifications and it would be easy create multiple equal instances. Or, depending on the nature of an instanceModifier, a list of varying objects. For example, an instanceModifier could read its value from an increasing counter.

Continuing with this thought, we could implement a fork method that would return a new clone of the GenericBuilder instance that it is called on. This is easily possible because the state of the builder is just the instantiator and the list of instanceModifiers. From there on, both builders could be altered with some other instanceModifiers. They would share the same basis and have some additional state set on built instances.

The last point I consider especially helpful when needing heavy entities for unit or even integration tests in enterprise applications. There would be no god-object for entities, but for builders instead.

The GenericBuilder can also replace the need for different test value factories. In my current project, there are many factories used for creating test instances. The code is tightly coupled to different test scenarios and it is difficult to extract portions of a test factory for reuse in another test factory in a slightly different scenario. With the GenericBuilder, reusing this becomes much easier as there is only a specific list of instanceModifiers.

To verify that created instances are valid, the GenericBuilder could be initialized with a set of predicates, which are verified in the build method after all instanceModifiers are run.

public T build() {
    T value = instantiator.get();
    instanceModifiers.forEach(modifier -> modifier.accept(value));
    verifyPredicates(value);
    instanceModifiers.clear();
    return value;
}

private void verifyPredicates(T value) {
    List<Predicate<T>> violated = predicates.stream()
            .filter(e -> !e.test(value)).collect(Collectors.toList());
    if (!violated.isEmpty()) {
        throw new IllegalStateException(value.toString()
                + " violates predicates " + violated);
    }
}

Immutable object creation

To use the above scheme for the creation of immutable objects, extract the state of the immutable object into a mutable object and use the instantiator and builder to operate on the mutable state object. Then, add a function that will create a new immutable instance for the mutable state. However, this requires that the immutable object either has its state encapsulated like this or it be changed in that fashion (basically applying parameter object pattern to its constructor).

This is in some way different than a builder was used in pre-java-8 times. There, the builder itself was the mutable object that created a new instance at the end. Now, we have a separation of the state a builder keeps in a mutable object and the builder functionality itself.

In essence
Stop writing boilerplate builder patterns and get productive using the GenericBuilder.