Question

Is it acceptable to name a named constructor valueOf that may return null in some cases?

For example, bar() is a named constructor that may return null if the argument is null.

class Foo {
    public static Foo bar(String value) {
        if (value == null)
            return null;
        else
            return new Foo();
    }
}

Would it be against the Java conventions to name it valueOf() instead? If not, I’m moving it to a helper.

EDIT: This method is a helper and must return null if the value is null for my needs.

Answer 1

Since that’s not actually a constructor, you can do whatever you want with it. But you might want to think about throwing a NullPointerException instead of returning null if you are worried about your callers.