Coding Best Practices for Java Apps

Introduction

Coding best practices are always helpful in ensuring the code quality, performance, and consistency.

In this article, I'll share a few coding best practices to follow while developing Java Applications that I use in my daily coding.

Before jumping to that, I'd recommend readers follow my other write-up that will set the stage for us:

Code Review Checklist for Java Beginners

Anshul Bansal ・ Jan 5 '20

#java #beginners #productivity #codequality

Now, we're all set to take a look at a few best practices:

1. Follow the OOPs principles - Abstraction, Encapsulation, Inheritance, and Polymorphism

2. Use Design Patterns like Singleton, Decorator, Factory, and Builder-Factory for reusable, robust, and maintainable code

3. Leverage the Project Lombok library to reduce boiler-plate code

4. Use Java Stream APIs and Lambda expressions to process collections of objects

5. Leverage Lambda expressions to perform functional programming in Java

6. Leverage Generics for cleaner code and less duplicity

7. Use the Collections class for performing general operations on a collection

8. Use the LocalDate, LocalTime, and LocalDateTime classes to work with Date/Time.

9. Consider Optional in place of null

10. Prefer Atomic variables and Concurrent Collections over Synchronization

11. Proper Error/Exception handling

12. Leverage ExecutorService for Asynchronous operations

13. Move the business logic to Services for reusability

14. Keep controllers thin - only for handling request/response

15. It's a better idea to reduce Database interactions

16. If using ORM technology like Hibernate, use Lazy/Eager fetching techniques wisely

17. Use a database connection pool for the handling of DB connections

18. Leverage batch insert/update for bulk transactions

19. May use asynchronous programming for long fetched queries

20. Try not to block the main thread for long execution task - try asynchronous programming instead using the FutureTask and CompletableFuture classes

21. Enable logging using SLF4J

22. Unit test the code using testing frameworks like JUnit

23. Document API specifications using Swagger 2

Summary

In this short article, we've seen a few pointers for coding best practices as well as a few tips and tricks to follow while developing Java Applications.

Please let me know your thoughts and share the best practices you follow in the comments below.

Thanks for reading!