Best practice to validate null and empty collection in Java

Question

I want to verify whether a collection is empty and null. Could anyone please let me know the best practice.

Currently, I am checking as below:

Answer 1

If you need to check for null, that is the way. However, if you have control on this, just return empty collection, whenever you can, and check only for empty later on.

This thread is about the same thing with C#, but the principles applies equally well to java. Like mentioned there, null should be returned only if

• null might mean something more specific;
• your API (contract) might force you to return null.