Is It A Best Practice To Pass Empty Map Purposely?

Question

Here's the scenario:

I've two different classes (say ClassA and ClassB) which will be calling a Static method (say meth1) of ClassC.

meth1 has three arguments: List<String> lstStr, Boolean bool and Map<integer,string> testMap

The only way to differentiate between ClassA and ClassB is that ClassB doesn't create any Map<integer,string> but ClassA has.

meth1 will be executing logic only if the IF condition satisfies and following is the condition:

• If testMap is Empty or null then execute - when called from ClassB
• If testMap is not Empty and contains certain values then execute - when called from ClassA

I've done OR between the above two conditions in IF.

If I pass null from ClassB then I would get null de-reference error (since I've !testMap.isEmpty() and containsKey() in IF condition bullet 2).

So how feasible is it to purposely pass an empty Map<integer,string> from ClassB method (without affecting resource usage since I'll be having huge data in lots of other variables).

This will make things easier since I can use both !testMap.isEmpty() and containsKey() for ClassA and also check for testMap.isempty() for classB.

Is it even a good practice?

Answer 1

A better approach would be to overload methods. You can create 2 methods with different parameters for your use case as below:

public class classC {

    public static Object meth1(List<String> lstStr, Boolean bool, Map<integer,string> testMap) {
        // logic
    }

    public static Object meth1(List<String> lstStr, Boolean bool) {
        // logic
    }
}

Depending on the parameters you pass, appropriate method will be invoked.

Answer 2

Pass the empty map as a parameter and check if map.isEmpty() Map documentaion

class c{
    static void method(List<String> lstStr, Boolean bool, Map<integer,string> testMap){
    if(!testMap.isEmpty()){
      //logic
    }
    else{
    }
 }
}

class B {
    //pass the empty map in method
    c.method(lstStr,true,new Map<integer,string>());
}

class A{
    //pass the data is map
    c.method(lstStr,true,testMap)
}