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

Yes, I think it's a good Idea.

If I could add something, what about this problem :

class People
{
    private String name;
    public People setName(String name)
    {
        this.name = name;
        return this;
    }
}

class Friend extends People
{
    private String nickName;
    public Friend setNickName(String nickName)
    {
        this.nickName = nickName;
        return this;
    }
}

This will work :

new Friend().setNickName("Bart").setName("Barthelemy");

This will not be accepted by Eclipse ! :

new Friend().setName("Barthelemy").setNickName("Bart");

This is because setName() returns a People and not a Friend, and there is no PeoplesetNickName.

How could we write setters to return SELF class instead of the name of the class ?

Something like this would be fine (if the SELF keyword would exist). Does this exist anyway ?

class People
{
    private String name;
    public SELF setName(String name)
    {
        this.name = name;
        return this;
    }
}