MF Bliki: FluentInterface

MF Bliki: FluentInterface

Marin Fowler puts a name to a particular type of programming style/API/interface: FluentInterface. It can best be summarized as:

   private void makeFluent(Customer customer) {
        customer.newOrder()
                .with(6, "TAL")
                .with(5, "HPK").skippable()
                .with(3, "LGV")
                .priorityRush();
    }

In this case, each of methods (with, skippable, priorityRush) return an object which can be in turn manipulated.

This is a clever solution to making blocks of Java code look as clean as possible. While this style seems to cry out for pretty specific circumstances, it's worth having in mind.