I keep finding unnecessary calls to UtilValidate.isEmpty in the project.
It seems they were added in a global S&R and committed in revision 883549.
I believe this is a bad pattern to use. If I want to call a method on
object A, why would I call a different method on object B that calls the
method on object A? I can just call object A's method directly and avoid
using object (or class) B. Not only is this indirection unnecessary, it
is also confusing.
From my perspective, there are serious drawbacks to using this approach:
1. Nearly every class is made dependent on UtilValidate.
2. It hurts performance. Static method calls are not free.
There are places where UtilValidate.isEmpty is used when it is
completely inappropriate - like for checking DOM Element attributes.
They are never null, and java.lang.String has an isEmpty() method. There
are other places where it is used on objects that are never null.
UtilValidate.isEmpty should be used when you don't know the object's
type or if it is null:
Object mysteryObj = methodThatMightReturnNull();
if (UtilValidate.isEmpty(mysteryObj) {
...
}
-Adrian
