Is it bad practice to make a setter return “this”?

Question

Is it a good or bad idea to make setters in java return \"this\"?

public Employee setName(String name){
   this.name = name;
   return this;
}

Answer 1

It's not a bad practice at all. But it's not compatiable with JavaBeans Spec.

And there is a lot of specification depends on those standard accessors.

You can always make them co-exist to each other.

public class Some {
    public String getValue() { // JavaBeans
        return value;
    }
    public void setValue(final String value) { // JavaBeans
        this.value = value;
    }
    public String value() { // simple
        return getValue();
    }
    public Some value(final String value) { // fluent/chaining
        setValue(value);
        return this;
    }
    private String value;
}

Now we can use them together.

new Some().value("some").getValue();

Here comes another version for immutable object.

public class Some {

    public static class Builder {

        public Some build() { return new Some(value); }

        public Builder value(final String value) {
            this.value = value;
            return this;
        }

        private String value;
    }

    private Some(final String value) {
        super();
        this.value = value;
    }

    public String getValue() { return value; }

    public String value() { return getValue();}

    private final String value;
}

Now we can do this.

new Some.Builder().value("value").build().getValue();