Question

Let’s say I have a method in java, which looks up a user in a database and returns their address and the team they are on.

I want to return both values from the method, and don’t want to split the method in two because it involves a database call and splitting involves twice the number of calls.

Given typical concerns in a moderate to large software project, what’s the best option?

whatGoesHere getUserInfo(String name) {
  // query the DB
}

I know the question smells of duplication with existing ones, but each other question had some element that made it different enough from this example that I thought it was worth asking again.

Answer 1

you have some options.
The most OOP it will be create a class to encapsulate those 2 properties, something like that

private class UserInfo {
  private Address address;
  private Team team;
}

Or if you want a simple solution you can return an array of objects:

Object[] getUserInfo(String name) {
  // query the DB
  return new Object[]{address,team};
}

Or if you want to expose this method to some library you can have some interface that it will consume those properties, something like this:

class APIClass{
  interface UserInfo{
    public Address getAddress();
    public Team getTeam();
  }

  UserInfo getUserInfo(String name) {
    // query the DB
    return new UserInfo(){
         public Address getAddress(){ return address; }
         public Team getTeam(){ return team; }
    };
  }
}