I have an object such as
public class ABC {
private String a;
private String b;
private String c;
//getters and setters
}
This object is returned from a method in the collections such as ArrayList<ABC>.
I just want to make the return immutable without changing anything in the object. Can anyone please help me with this?
Don't provide setters (mutators), make immutable attributes private, only provide value assignment via constructor.
You can always declare your immutable attributes final. So you can only assign them values once and can't change them later.
You cannot make an object immutable if its class provides for mutation. Objects always offer all the capabilities defined by their classes.
Therefore, if you want an immutable object then you need an immutable class. If you cannot change the class in question, then a wrapper class such as #duffymo described could serve that purpose. Note, however, that objects of such a class are not interchangeable with objects of the wrapped class, and also that somehow you need to provide for applying the wrappers.
If you need objects that are fully interchangeable with objects of class ABC, then you're stuck with the fact that ABCs are mutable, therefore anything interchangeable with ABCs is mutable, at least with respect to the mutable aspects of ABC. Then it comes down to why you want immutability. If the point is to avoid mutating the object referenced by the List, then copying those objects (to whatever depth is appropriate) is an alternative.
As a third alternative, if the target class has no non-private fields then you might be able to create a subclass, overriding the setters to be ineffective or to throw some variety of unchecked exception. In that case, note that
Such a subclass is not good form, and its instances are not truly interchangeable with instances of class ABC.
If class ABC has accessible properties of mutable types (e.g. mutable containers), then you may need to do something to prevent those objects from being mutated, too. Recursively.
Yes, this is a big mess.
Use interfaces with only getters
A is your concrete (impl) class
Coding to interfaces?
public I getA(){ retrun AImpl();}
where
public interface I { public String getOne()}
public AImple implements I {...}
The only "Change" in your current class would be "implements I"
JDK and Apache commons use decorators
http://grepcode.com/file/repository.jboss.org/nexus/content/repositories/releases/org.jboss.embedded/thirdparty-all/beta3.SP15/org/apache/commons/collections/list/UnmodifiableList.java
Another solution
Clone your object and return it, that way copy is changed and original object remains intact
If I have a class like that:
public class MyObject {
private int myField = 2;
public void setMyField(int f) {
this.myField = f;
}
}
Will objects of this class be mutable?
Thanks!
Of course - if you want it to be immutable, then you need something like:
public class MyObject {
private final int myField;
public MyObject(int f) {
myfield = f;
}
public int getMyField() {
return myField;
}
}
yes
Mutable objects have fields that can be changed, immutable objects
have no fields that can be changed after the object is created.
You already have several answers with a "Yes".
I would like to add a "but" (if I would be bold, I would say "No" ;-)
Yes, an object of this class appears to be mutable, since it provides a setter to change the field. However, since it does not have a getter for that field, neither any other getter depending on that field, and since the field is private, it is currently not possible to read that state.
Put differently: The object has state, but it does not expose any state to the outside.
I would call that object "effectively immutable".
There are some design patterns, where objects are "effectively immutable", for example "Lazy Initialization" of an "Immutable Object".
Note: The concept of being "effectively immutable" is discussed in Section 3.5.4 of Java Concurrency in Practice by Brian Goetz.
Yes, objects of this class are mutable. The designer of the class can't prohibit by any technical means (in real existing Java) consumers of the objects to observe and modify the contents of the field.
private is an explicitly declared contract regarding intended usage of the field - this contract can be broken, e.g. with reflection.
Not providing any methods that change the data of an object after creation can also be a (implicitly declared) contract about intended use and mutability - this contract, too, can be broken, like any contract that needs two conforming parties.
Edit: Unless there is another party that has the means to enforce - like in Java the SecurityManager stopping you from changing a final field at runtime.
Yes, your object is mutable as the value of myField can be changed after the instance is created using the setter.
Immutability can be achieved using final fields, as it will not allow you to change the value of a variable once it is initialized.
Answer by #JakubK points out how you can make your class Immutable.
But declaring reference final wont make the object being pointed by it final.
For example:
class MyObject{
private final List<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();
public List<Integer> getList(){
return list;
}
}
I can change add a new element to the list from outside by doing something like this
instance.getList().add(1); //mutates the list
This example is not immutable, as the List can be changed by someone else.
To define whether something is mutable, one has to define what state is encapsulated thereby. If MyObject specifies that its state includes the value which Reflection will report for myField, then it is mutable. If that field is not specified as being part of the object's observable state, then it may be most purposes regarded as immutable.
To be more specific, I would regard a class as being immutable only if one could perform any combination of documented operations upon the class, in any sequence and with any timing (even on multiple threads), and not have any documented behavioral aspects of of any of them affected by any other. The fact that a method might change the contents of a private field is relevant if and only if that change would affect some documented behavioral aspect of another method call (to the same or different method). For example, I would say that the fact that String.hashCode() modifies the hash field does not make String mutable, because the value returned by hashCode() is not affected by whether or not the field had been written previously. If a class had a hashCode method which would, if a field was blank, generate a random number and store it in that field, and otherwise return the value directly, such a class would be mutable unless it ensured that the field was tested and set as an atomic operation. In the absence of such assurance, it would be possible for near-simultaneous calls to hashCode() to yield different values, and thus for future calls to differ values that would differ from at least one of them (implying that the object's state had changed between the call that returned the odd-ball value and the later call).
In my quest to make an object immutable in Java, I marked the class final, All of its variables final and provided no setters and getters. Will these provide sufficient guarantees that the object will not be modified ? Are all 3 necessary or 2 of the 3 conditions are more than enough ?
public final class MyClass
Has nothing to do with immutability, it only disallows inheritance.
Just marking variable references final is not enough, every object you refer to has to be immutable as well.
final doesn't make an object immutable, it makes the references immutable;
private final List<String> strings = new ArrayList<String>();
strings is still a mutable List, only the reference to the List is immutable.
Be careful with things like:
Collections.unmodifiableList(strings);
Collections.unmodifiableList() JavaDoc provides a "unmodifiable view" but it still doesn't guarantee that the underlying list could not be changed by an external reference to the original List that is being wrapped. A deep copy of the list contents would have to be made into a new list and that list wrapped with unmodifiable.
And every instance of every object and all their children and children's children have to be immutable as well.
Marking your fields final is the only option you need out of the mentioned set. You can provide getters, but be careful about mutable sub-objects like collections. Final makes the reference immutable but not the contents. A useful technique with getters is to make a defensive copy if the value is mutable like so:
public class ImmutableExample{
private final int value1; // immutable
private final List<Integer> value2; // contents will not be immutable
public ImmutableExample(...){...} // be careful here to copy the collection as you want to disalow any outside modification.
public int getValue1(){
return value1;
}
public List<Integer> getValue2(){
return Collections.unmodifiableList(value2);
}
}
Another option is to use Google Guava collections that include Immutable collections as we discussed here: Immutable objects and unmodifiable collections. These result in really easy immutable classes:
public class ImmutableExample{
private final int value1; // immutable
private final ImmutableList<Integer> value2; // immutable
public ImmutableExample(...){...}
public int getValue1(){
return value1;
}
public List<Integer> getValue2(){
return value2;
}
}
Marking your class as final you're only telling that no one can subclass it.
That said, marking your variables as final would be enough, as long as your class had only 'primitive' attributes. It's ok (and encouraged) to keep the getters, however, you also may want remove the setters, since while you don't want any external class to mess around with your variables, setters won't be needed.
It would be more natural to set all variables private and only provide getters. You then need not set the class final which is unnecessary overkill.
Further consideration must be made if the fields are non-final objects themselves such as collections. You should only store copies of these.
Contrary to some of the comments here, making a class final does have to do with immutability. For a class to be immutable, it should be final, so as to not allow subclasses to override any getters, and thereby not allowing them to "mutate" it by returning a different value.
Recall that to guarantee immutability, a class must not permit itself to be subclassed.
- Joshua Bloch, Effective Java
also, from the Java tutorials, A Strategy for Defining Immutable Objects:
3.Don't allow subclasses to override methods. The simplest way to do this is to declare the class as final
Is the below class immutable:
final class MyClass {
private final int[] array;
public MyClass(int[] array){
this.array = array;
}
}
No it is not because the elements of the array can still be changed.
int[] v1 = new int[10];
MyClass v2 = new MyClass(v1);
v1[0] = 42; // mutation visible to MyClass1
My two cents regarding immutability rules (which I retained from reading Effective Java - a great book!):
Don't provide methods that can modify the state of an object.
Make all your fields final.
Make sure that your class is non-extendable.
Make all your fields private.
Provide exclusive access to any fields or components of your class that can be changed. Essentially this applies to your situation (as explained by JaredPar). A person that uses your class still has a reference to your array. The opposite is the case where you return a reference to an component of your class. In this case, always create defensive copies. In your case, you should not assign the reference. Instead, copy the array that the user of your class provides, into your internal component.
"Immutability" is a convention between the programmer and himself. That convention may be more or less enforced by the compiler.
Instances of a class are "immutable" if they do not change during the normal course of the application code execution. In some cases we know that they do not change because the code actually forbids it; in other cases, this is just part of how we use the class. For instance, a java.util.Date instance is formally mutable (there is a setTime() method on it) but it is customary to handle it as if it were immutable; this is just an application-wide convention that the Date.setTime() method shall not be called.
As additional notes:
Immutability is often thought of in terms of "external characteristics". For instance, Java's String is documented to be immutable (that's what the Javadoc says). But if you look at the source code, you will see that a String instance contains a private field called hash which may change over time: this is a cache for the value returned by hashCode(). We still say that String is immutable because the hash field is an internal optimization which has no effect visible from the outside.
With reflection, the most private of instance fields can be modified (including those marked as final), if the programmer wishes so hard enough. Not that it is a good idea: it may break assumptions used by other pieces of code using the said instance. As I said, immutability is a convention: if the programmer wants to fight himself, then he can, but this can have adverse side-effects on productivity...
Most Java values are actually references. It is up to you to define whether a referenced object is part of what you consider to be "the instance contents". In your class, you have a field which references an (externally provided) array of integers. If the contents of that array are modified afterwards, would you consider that this breaks immutability of your MyClass instance ? There is no generic answer to that question.
There is no way to make an array immutable. That is there is no way to keep any client code from setting or removing or adding items to the array.
Here is a truly immutable alternative:
private static class MyClass
{
private List<Integer> list;
private MyClass(final int[] array)
{
final List<Integer> tmplist = new ArrayList<Integer>(array.length);
for (int i : array)
{
tmplist.add(array[i]);
}
this.list = Collections.unmodifiableList(tmplist);
}
}
To make a class immutable, you need to both ensure that all the fields on it are final, and that the types of those fields are immutable too.
This can be a pain to remember, but there is a tool to help you.
Pure4J provides an annotation #ImmutableValue, which you can add to an interface or class.
There is a maven plugin to check at compile-time that you are meeting the rules on immutability following this.
Hope this helps.
In my code, I am creating a collection of objects which will be accessed by various threads in a fashion that is only safe if the objects are immutable. When an attempt is made to insert a new object into my collection, I want to test to see if it is immutable (if not, I'll throw an exception).
One thing I can do is to check a few well-known immutable types:
private static final Set<Class> knownImmutables = new HashSet<Class>(Arrays.asList(
String.class, Byte.class, Short.class, Integer.class, Long.class,
Float.class, Double.class, Boolean.class, BigInteger.class, BigDecimal.class
));
...
public static boolean isImmutable(Object o) {
return knownImmutables.contains(o.getClass());
}
This actually gets me 90% of the way, but sometimes my users will want to create simple immutable types of their own:
public class ImmutableRectangle {
private final int width;
private final int height;
public ImmutableRectangle(int width, int height) {
this.width = width;
this.height = height;
}
public int getWidth() { return width; }
public int getHeight() { return height; }
}
Is there some way (perhaps using reflection) that I could reliably detect whether a class is immutable? False positives (thinking it's immutable when it isn't) are not acceptable but false negatives (thinking it's mutable when it isn't) are.
Edited to add: Thanks for the insightful and helpful answers. As some of the answers pointed out, I neglected to define my security objectives. The threat here is clueless developers -- this is a piece of framework code that will be used by large numbers of people who know next-to-nothing about threading and won't be reading the documentation. I do NOT need to defend against malicious developers -- anyone clever enough to mutate a String or perform other shenanigans will also be smart enough to know it's not safe in this case. Static analysis of the codebase IS an option, so long as it is automated, but code reviews cannot be counted on because there is no guarantee every review will have threading-savvy reviewers.
There is no reliable way to detect if a class is immutable. This is because there are so many ways a property of a class might be altered and you can't detect all of them via reflection.
The only way to get close to this is:
Only allow final properties of types that are immutable (primitive types and classes you know are immutable),
Require the class to be final itself
Require that they inherit from a base class you provide (which is guaranteed to be immutable)
Then you can check with the following code if the object you have is immutable:
static boolean isImmutable(Object obj) {
Class<?> objClass = obj.getClass();
// Class of the object must be a direct child class of the required class
Class<?> superClass = objClass.getSuperclass();
if (!Immutable.class.equals(superClass)) {
return false;
}
// Class must be final
if (!Modifier.isFinal(objClass.getModifiers())) {
return false;
}
// Check all fields defined in the class for type and if they are final
Field[] objFields = objClass.getDeclaredFields();
for (int i = 0; i < objFields.length; i++) {
if (!Modifier.isFinal(objFields[i].getModifiers())
|| !isValidFieldType(objFields[i].getType())) {
return false;
}
}
// Lets hope we didn't forget something
return true;
}
static boolean isValidFieldType(Class<?> type) {
// Check for all allowed property types...
return type.isPrimitive() || String.class.equals(type);
}
Update: As suggested in the comments, it could be extended to recurse on the superclass instead of checking for a certain class. It was also suggested to recursively use isImmutable in the isValidFieldType Method. This could probably work and I have also done some testing. But this is not trivial. You can't just check all field types with a call to isImmutable, because String already fails this test (its field hash is not final!). Also you are easily running into endless recursions, causing StackOverflowErrors ;) Other problems might be caused by generics, where you also have to check their types for immutablity.
I think with some work, these potential problems might be solved somehow. But then, you have to ask yourself first if it really is worth it (also performance wise).
Use the Immutable annotation from Java Concurrency in Practice. The tool FindBugs can then help in detecting classes which are mutable but shouldn't be.
At my company we've defined an Attribute called #Immutable. If you choose to attach that to a class, it means you promise you're immutable.
It works for documentation, and in your case it would work as a filter.
Of course you're still depending on the author keeping his word about being immutable, but since the author explicitly added the annotation it's a reasonable assumption.
Basically no.
You could build a giant white-list of accepted classes but I think the less crazy way would be to just write in the documentation for the collection that everything that goes is this collection must be immutable.
Edit: Other people have suggested having an immutable annotation. This is fine, but you need the documentation as well. Otherwise people will just think "if I put this annotation on my class I can store it in the collection" and will just chuck it on anything, immutable and mutable classes alike. In fact, I would be wary of having an immutable annotation just in case people think that annotation makes their class immutable.
In my code, I am creating a collection of objects which will be accessed by various threads in a fashion that is only safe if the objects are immutable.
Not a direct answer to your question, but keep in mind that objects that are immutable are not automatically guaranteed to be thread safe (sadly). Code needs to be side-effect free to be thread safe, and that's quite a bit more difficult.
Suppose you have this class:
class Foo {
final String x;
final Integer y;
...
public bar() {
Singleton.getInstance().foolAround();
}
}
Then the foolAround() method might include some non-thread safe operations, which will blow up your app. And it's not possible to test for this using reflection, as the actual reference can only be found in the method body, not in the fields or exposed interface.
Other than that, the others are correct: you can scan for all declared fields of the class, check if every one of them is final and also an immutable class, and you're done. I don't think methods being final is a requirement.
Also, be careful about recursively checking dependent fields for immutability, you might end up with circles:
class A {
final B b; // might be immutable...
}
class B {
final A a; // same so here.
}
Classes A and B are perfectly immutable (and possibly even usable through some reflection hacks), but naive recursive code will go into an endless loop checking A, then B, then A again, onwards to B, ...
You can fix that with a 'seen' map that disallows cycles, or with some really clever code that decides classes are immutable if all their dependees are immutable only depending on themselves, but that's going to be really complicated...
This could be another hint:
If the class has no setters then it cannot be mutated, granted the parameters it was created with are either "primitive" types or not mutable themselves.
Also no methods could be overridden, all fields are final and private,
I'll try to code something tomorrow for you, but Simon's code using reflection looks pretty good.
In the mean time try to grab a copy of the "Effective Java" book by Josh Block, it has an Item related to this topic. While is does not for sure say how to detect an immutable class, it shows how to create a good one.
The item is called: "Favor immutability"
Updated link: https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Java-Joshua-Bloch/dp/0134685997
You Can Ask your clients to add metadata (annotations) and check them at runtime with reflection, like this:
Metadata:
#Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
#Target(ElementType.CLASS)
public #interface Immutable{ }
Client Code:
#Immutable
public class ImmutableRectangle {
private final int width;
private final int height;
public ImmutableRectangle(int width, int height) {
this.width = width;
this.height = height;
}
public int getWidth() { return width; }
public int getHeight() { return height; }
}
Then by using reflection on the class, check if it has the annotation (I would paste the code but its boilerplate and can be found easily online)
why do all the recommendations require the class to be final? if you are using reflection to check the class of each object, and you can determine programmatically that that class is immutable (immutable, final fields), then you don't need to require that the class itself is final.
You can use AOP and #Immutable annotation from jcabi-aspects:
#Immutable
public class Foo {
private String data;
}
// this line will throw a runtime exception since class Foo
// is actually mutable, despite the annotation
Object object = new Foo();
Like the other answerers already said, IMHO there is no reliable way to find out if an object is really immutable.
I would just introduce an interface "Immutable" to check against when appending. This works as a hint that only immutable objects should be inserted for whatever reason you're doing it.
interface Immutable {}
class MyImmutable implements Immutable{...}
public void add(Object o) {
if (!(o instanceof Immutable) && !checkIsImmutableBasePrimitive(o))
throw new IllegalArgumentException("o is not immutable!");
...
}
Try this:
public static boolean isImmutable(Object object){
if (object instanceof Number) { // Numbers are immutable
if (object instanceof AtomicInteger) {
// AtomicIntegers are mutable
} else if (object instanceof AtomicLong) {
// AtomLongs are mutable
} else {
return true;
}
} else if (object instanceof String) { // Strings are immutable
return true;
} else if (object instanceof Character) { // Characters are immutable
return true;
} else if (object instanceof Class) { // Classes are immutable
return true;
}
Class<?> objClass = object.getClass();
// Class must be final
if (!Modifier.isFinal(objClass.getModifiers())) {
return false;
}
// Check all fields defined in the class for type and if they are final
Field[] objFields = objClass.getDeclaredFields();
for (int i = 0; i < objFields.length; i++) {
if (!Modifier.isFinal(objFields[i].getModifiers())
|| !isImmutable(objFields[i].getType())) {
return false;
}
}
// Lets hope we didn't forget something
return true;
}
To my knowledge, there is no way to identify immutable objects that is 100% correct. However, I have written a library to get you closer. It performs analysis of bytecode of a class to determine if it is immutable or not, and can execute at runtime. It is on the strict side, so it also allows whitelisting known immutable classes.
You can check it out at: www.mutabilitydetector.org
It allows you to write code like this in your application:
/*
* Request an analysis of the runtime class, to discover if this
* instance will be immutable or not.
*/
AnalysisResult result = analysisSession.resultFor(dottedClassName);
if (result.isImmutable.equals(IMMUTABLE)) {
/*
* rest safe in the knowledge the class is
* immutable, share across threads with joyful abandon
*/
} else if (result.isImmutable.equals(NOT_IMMUTABLE)) {
/*
* be careful here: make defensive copies,
* don't publish the reference,
* read Java Concurrency In Practice right away!
*/
}
It is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license.
Something which works for a high percentage of builtin classes is test for instanceof Comparable. For the classes which are not immutable like Date, they are often treated as immutable in most cases.
I appreciate and admire the amount of work Grundlefleck has put into his mutability detector, but I think it is a bit of an overkill. You can write a simple but practically very adequate (that is, pragmatic) detector as follows:
(note: this is a copy of my comment here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/28111150/773113)
First of all, you are not going to be just writing a method which determines whether a class is immutable; instead, you will need to write an immutability detector class, because it is going to have to maintain some state. The state of the detector will be the detected immutability of all classes which it has examined so far. This is not only useful for performance, but it is actually necessary because a class may contain a circular reference, which would cause a simplistic immutability detector to fall into infinite recursion.
The immutability of a class has four possible values: Unknown, Mutable, Immutable, and Calculating. You will probably want to have a map which associates each class that you have encountered so far to an immutability value. Of course, Unknown does not actually need to be implemented, since it will be the implied state of any class which is not yet in the map.
So, when you begin examining a class, you associate it with a Calculating value in the map, and when you are done, you replace Calculating with either Immutable or Mutable.
For each class, you only need to check the field members, not the code. The idea of checking bytecode is rather misguided.
First of all, you should not check whether a class is final; The finality of a class does not affect its immutability. Instead, a method which expects an immutable parameter should first of all invoke the immutability detector to assert the immutability of the class of the actual object that was passed. This test can be omitted if the type of the parameter is a final class, so finality is good for performance, but strictly speaking not necessary. Also, as you will see further down, a field whose type is of a non-final class will cause the declaring class to be considered as mutable, but still, that's a problem of the declaring class, not the problem of the non-final immutable member class. It is perfectly fine to have a tall hierarchy of immutable classes, in which all the non-leaf nodes must of course be non-final.
You should not check whether a field is private; it is perfectly fine for a class to have a public field, and the visibility of the field does not affect the immutability of the declaring class in any way, shape, or form. You only need to check whether the field is final and its type is immutable.
When examining a class, what you want to do first of all is to recurse to determine the immutability of its super class. If the super is mutable, then the descendant is by definition mutable too.
Then, you only need to check the declared fields of the class, not all fields.
If a field is non-final, then your class is mutable.
If a field is final, but the type of the field is mutable, then your class is mutable. (Arrays are by definition mutable.)
If a field is final, and the type of the field is Calculating, then ignore it and proceed to the next field. If all fields are either immutable or Calculating, then your class is immutable.
If the type of the field is an interface, or an abstract class, or a non-final class, then it is to be considered as mutable, since you have absolutely no control over what the actual implementation may do. This might seem like an insurmountable problem, because it means that wrapping a modifiable collection inside an UnmodifiableCollection will still fail the immutability test, but it is actually fine, and it can be handled with the following workaround.
Some classes may contain non-final fields and still be effectively immutable. An example of this is the String class. Other classes which fall into this category are classes which contain non-final members purely for performance monitoring purposes (invocation counters, etc.), classes which implement popsicle immutability (look it up), and classes which contain members that are interfaces which are known to not cause any side effects. Also, if a class contains bona fide mutable fields but promises not to take them into account when computing hashCode() and equals(), then the class is of course unsafe when it comes to multi-threading, but it can still be considered as immutable for the purpose of using it as a key in a map. So, all these cases can be handled in one of two ways:
Manually adding classes (and interfaces) to your immutability detector. If you know that a certain class is effectively immutable despite the fact that the immutability test for it fails, you can manually add an entry to your detector which associates it with Immutable. This way, the detector will never attempt to check whether it is immutable, it will always just say 'yes, it is.'
Introducing an #ImmutabilityOverride annotation. Your immutability detector can check for the presence of this annotation on a field, and if present, it may treat the field as immutable despite the fact that the field may be non-final or its type may be mutable. The detector may also check for the presence of this annotation on the class, thus treating the class as immutable without even bothering to check its fields.
I hope this helps future generations.