Question

I am writing a Java API library for an existing REST API.

The REST API has a few postOperations (getPosts, getUserPosts, getGlobalPosts etc.)
So I have a class for postOperations that exposes that.
Now I need to add to all the operations the option to add a group of parameters (generalParameters).

What do you think is the better solution?

1. Add a parameter to the current functions, which means that sometimes the user will have to pass null (it’s actually 80% of the time).
2. Add an overloading function to every operation that gets 2 parameters (this means adding 6-7 overloading methods to the class)

I know both ways work.
And it’s not a major issue in most applications, but when writing a library other would use it seems a bit more important to me.

What’s your opinion? what is a better api to expose?

Answer 1

I would do something like this:

public void handle(some parameters) {
    //handle params
}
public void handle() {
    handle(null, null, -1, w/e);
}

Per your edit:

This code here uses option 2; they will never have to pass a null value if you add another overloaded method which doesn’t take in anything, but passes null for them