Checks visibility of class members. Only static final, immutable or annotated by specified annotation members may be public; other class members must be private unless the property protectedAllowed or packageAllowed is set.
Public members are not flagged if the name matches the public member regular expression (contains "^serialVersionUID$" by default).
Note that Checkstyle 2 used to include "^f[A-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]*$" in the default pattern to allow names used in container-managed persistence for Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 1.1 with the default settings. With EJB 2.0 it is no longer necessary to have public access for persistent fields, so the default has been changed.
Rationale: Enforce encapsulation.
Check also has options making it less strict:
ignoreAnnotationCanonicalNames - the list of annotations which ignore variables in consideration. If user will provide short annotation name that type will match to any named the same type without consideration of package
allowPublicImmutableFields - which allows immutable fields be declared as public if defined in final class. Default value is true
Field is known to be immutable if: - It's declared as final - Has either a primitive type or instance of class user defined to be immutable (such as String, ImmutableCollection from Guava and etc)
Classes known to be immutable are listed in immutableClassCanonicalNames by their canonical names.
Rationale: Forcing all fields of class to have private modified by default is good in most cases, but in some cases it drawbacks in too much boilerplate get/set code. One of such cases are immutable classes.
Restriction: Check doesn't check if class is immutable, there's no checking if accessory methods are missing and all fields are immutable, we only check if current field is immutable and defined in final class
Star imports are out of scope of this Check. So if one of type imported via star import collides with user specified one by its short name - there won't be Check's violation.
| name | description | type | default value |
|---|---|---|---|
| packageAllowed | whether package visible members are allowed | boolean | false |
| protectedAllowed | whether protected members are allowed | boolean | false |
| publicMemberPattern | pattern for public members that should be ignored | regular expression | ^serialVersionUID$ |
| allowPublicFinalFields | allows field with only final modifier be public | boolean | true |
| immutableClassCanonicalNames | immutable classes canonical names | String Set | java.lang.String, java.lang.Integer, java.lang.Byte, java.lang.Character, java.lang.Short, java.lang.Boolean, java.lang.Long, java.lang.Double, java.lang.Float, java.lang.StackTraceElement, java.math.BigInteger, java.math.BigDecimal, java.io.File, java.util.Locale, java.util.UUID, java.net.URL, java.net.URI, java.net.Inet4Address, java.net.Inet6Address, java.net.InetSocketAddress, |
| ignoreAnnotationCanonicalNames | ignore annotations canonical names | String Set | org.junit.Rule, com.google.common.annotations.VisibleForTesting |
To configure the check:
<module name="VisibilityModifier"/>
To configure the check so that it allows package visible members:
<module name="VisibilityModifier">
<property name="packageAllowed" value="true"/>
</module>
To configure the check so that it allows no public members:
<module name="VisibilityModifier">
<property name="publicMemberPattern" value="^$"/>
</module>
To configure the Check so that it allows public immutable fields (mostly for immutable classes):
<module name="VisibilityModifier"/>
Example of allowed public immutable fields:
public class ImmutableClass
{
public final ImmutableSet<String> includes; // No warning
public final ImmutableSet<String> excludes; // No warning
public final java.lang.String notes; // No warning
public final BigDecimal value; // No warning
public ImmutableClass(Collection<String> includes, Collection<String> excludes,
BigDecimal value, String notes)
{
this.includes = ImmutableSet.copyOf(includes);
this.excludes = ImmutableSet.copyOf(excludes);
this.value = value;
this.notes = notes;
}
}
To configure the Check which allows user specified immutable class names:
<module name="VisibilityModifier">
<property name="immutableClassCanonicalNames" value="
com.google.common.collect.ImmutableSet"/>
</module>
Example of allowed public immutable fields:
public class ImmutableClass
{
public final ImmutableSet<String> includes; // No warning
public final ImmutableSet<String> excludes; // No warning
public final java.lang.String notes; // Warning here because
//'java.lang.String' wasn't specified as allowed class
public final int someValue; // No warning
public ImmutableClass(Collection<String> includes, Collection<String> excludes,
String notes, int someValue)
{
this.includes = ImmutableSet.copyOf(includes);
this.excludes = ImmutableSet.copyOf(excludes);
this.value = value;
this.notes = notes;
this.someValue = someValue;
}
}
To configure the Check passing fields annotated with @com.annotation.CustomAnnotation:
<module name="VisibilityModifier">
<property name="ignoreAnnotationCanonicalNames" value=
"com.annotation.CustomAnnotation"/>
</module>
Example of allowed field:
class SomeClass
{
@com.annotation.CustomAnnotation
String annotatedString; // no warning
@CustomAnnotation
String shortCustomAnnotated; // no warning
}
To configure the Check passing fields annotated with @org.junit.Rule and @com.google.common.annotations.VisibleForTesting annotations:
<module name="VisibilityModifier"/>
Example of allowed fields:
class SomeClass
{
@org.junit.Rule
public TemporaryFolder publicJUnitRule = new TemporaryFolder(); // no warning
@com.google.common.annotations.VisibleForTesting
public String testString = ""; // no warning
}
To configure the Check passing fields annotated with short annotation name:
<module name="VisibilityModifier">
<property name="ignoreAnnotationCanonicalNames"
value="CustomAnnotation"/>
</module>
Example of allowed fields:
class SomeClass
{
@CustomAnnotation
String customAnnotated; // no warning
@com.annotation.CustomAnnotation
String customAnnotated1; // no warning
@mypackage.annotation.CustomAnnotation
String customAnnotatedAnotherPackage; // another package but short name matches
// so no violation
}
Implements Joshua Bloch, Effective Java, Item 17 - Use Interfaces only to define types.
According to Bloch, an interface should describe a type. It is therefore inappropriate to define an interface that does not contain any methods but only constants. The Standard class javax.swing.SwingConstants is an example of a class that would be flagged by this check.
The check can be configured to also disallow marker interfaces like java.io.Serializable, that do not contain methods or constants at all.
| name | description | type | default value |
|---|---|---|---|
| allowMarkerInterfaces | Controls whether marker interfaces like Serializable are allowed. | Boolean | true |
Makes sure that utility classes (classes that contain only static methods or fields in their API) do not have a public constructor.
Rationale: Instantiating utility classes does not make sense. Hence the constructors should either be private or (if you want to allow subclassing) protected. A common mistake is forgetting to hide the default constructor.
If you make the constructor protected you may want to consider the following constructor implementation technique to disallow instantiating subclasses:
public class StringUtils // not final to allow subclassing
{
protected StringUtils() {
// prevents calls from subclass
throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}
public static int count(char c, String s) {
// ...
}
}
Checks that classes are designed for extension. More specifically, it enforces a programming style where superclasses provide empty "hooks" that can be implemented by subclasses.
The exact rule is that nonprivate, nonstatic methods of classes that can be subclassed must
Rationale: This API design style protects superclasses against being broken by subclasses. The downside is that subclasses are limited in their flexibility, in particular they cannot prevent execution of code in the superclass, but that also means that subclasses cannot corrupt the state of the superclass by forgetting to call the superclass's method.
Ensures that exception classes (classes with names conforming to some regular expression and explicitly extending classes with names conforming to other regular expression) are immutable, that is, that they have only final fields.
The current algorithm is very simple: it checks that all members of exception are final. The user can still mutate an exception's instance (e.g. Throwable has a method called setStackTrace which changes the exception's stack trace). But, at least, all information provided by this exception type is unchangeable.
Rationale: Exception instances should represent an error condition. Having non final fields not only allows the state to be modified by accident and therefore mask the original condition but also allows developers to accidentally forget to set the initial state. In both cases, code catching the exception could draw incorrect conclusions based on the state.
| name | description | type | default value |
|---|---|---|---|
| format | pattern for exception class names | regular expression | ^.*Exception$|^.*Error$|^.*Throwable$ |
| extendedClassNameFormat | pattern for extended class names | regular expression | ^.*Exception$|^.*Error$|^.*Throwable$ |
Restricts throws statements to a specified count (1 by default).
Rationale: Exceptions form part of a method's interface. Declaring a method to throw too many differently rooted exceptions makes exception handling onerous and leads to poor programming practices such as writing code like catch(Exception ex). This check forces developers to put exceptions into a hierarchy such that in the simplest case, only one type of exception need be checked for by a caller but any subclasses can be caught specifically if necessary.
| name | description | type | default value |
|---|---|---|---|
| max | maximum allowed number of throws statements | Integer | 1 |
To configure the check so that it doesn't allow more than two throws per method:
<module name="ThrowsCount">
<property name="max" value="2"/>
</module>
Check nested (inner) classes/interfaces are declared at the bottom of the class after all method and field declarations.
Checks that each top-level class, interface or enum resides in a source file of its own. Official description of a 'top-level' term:7.6. Top Level Type Declarations. If file doesn't contains public class, enum or interface, top-level type is the first type in file.
An example of check's configuration:
<module name="OneTopLevelClass"/>
An example of check's configuration applied only to classes:
<module name="OneTopLevelClass">
<property name="tokens" value="CLASS_DEF">
</module>
An example of code with violations:
public class Foo{
//methods
}
class Foo2{
//methods
}
An example of code without public top-level type:
class Foo{ // top-level class
//methods
}
class Foo2{
//methods
}
An example of code without violations:
public class Foo{
//methods
}