What's a fluent interface?

Question

I recently came across this expression - but reading up on Wikipedia did not clarify it much for me - I still don\'t get it:

1. What\'s the point of it
2. H

Answer 1

There are different interpretations of the term "fluent interface". A common way to create one in C++ is method chaining, which is commonly used in for example the iostream library:

Object.MethodA().MethodB();
cout << "a = " << a;

The Named Parameter Idiom is another nice example of a fluent interface:

Window w = CreateWindow()
               .Width(400)
               .Height(300)
               .OnTop();

The benefits? Code that's better readable and more flexible, although that still depends on the implementation of course.