Mastering Lombok @Accessors: Fluent, Chain, and Prefix Explained

Preface

In your work you may encounter the annotation @Accessors(chain = true), which belongs to the Lombok library; this article explains its meaning.

1. @Accessors Source Code

Opening the source of @Accessors reveals two main points:

1) The annotation primarily influences how getter and setter methods are generated for fields, allowing related customizations.

2) When applied to a class, it affects all fields in that class; when applied to a specific field, it only affects that field.

The annotation defines three attributes: fluent , chain , and prefix . The following sections explain each.

2. @Accessors Attribute Description

2.1 fluent attribute

If omitted, the default is false. When set to true, the generated getter method does not have the get prefix and the setter method does not have the set prefix.

2.2 chain attribute

If omitted, the default is false. When set to true, the setter method returns the current object, enabling method chaining.

2.3 prefix attribute

This attribute is a string array. When it contains values, those prefixes are ignored during getter and setter generation.

For example, with fields xxName and yyAge, xx and yy are considered prefixes. The generated getter and setter methods will retain those prefixes.

If the prefixes are added to the @Accessors attribute, you can invoke the getter and setter methods as if the prefixes did not exist.