Question

I often use apache HashCodeBuilder and EqualsBuilder for object equality using reflection, but recently I a colleague told me that using reflection may cause a huge performance hit if the entity contains lots of properties. Worried that I may be using a wrong implementation, my question is, which of the following approach would you prefer? And why?

public class Admin {

    private Long id;
    private String userName;

    public String getUserName() {
        return userName;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object o) {
        if (!(o instanceof Admin)) {
            return false;
        }
        Admin otherAdmin  = (Admin) o;
        EqualsBuilder builder = new EqualsBuilder();
        builder.append(getUserName(), otherAdmin.getUserName());
        return builder.isEquals();
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        HashCodeBuilder builder = new HashCodeBuilder();
        builder.append(getUserName());
        return builder.hashCode();
    }
}

Vs.

public class Admin {

    private Long id;
    private String userName;

    public String getUserName() {
        return userName;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object o) {
      return EqualsBuilder.reflectionEquals(this, o, Arrays.asList(id));
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        return HashCodeBuilder.reflectionHashCode(this, Arrays.asList(id));
    }
}

Answer 1

Of course the second option is more elegant and simple. But if you are concerned about performance you should go for first approach. Second method also fails if a security manager is running.
I would go for the first option if I was in your situation.

Also there is a mistake in your first approach in generating hashCode:
It should be builder.toHashCode()
instead of builder.hashCode(). The latter returns hashcode builder object’s hash code.