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

Paulo Abrantes offers another way to make JavaBean setters fluent: define an inner builder class for each JavaBean. If you're using tools that get flummoxed by setters that return values, Paulo's pattern could help.