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A few years ago, I did a survey of DbC packages for Java, and I wasn't wholly satisfied with any of them. Unfortunately I didn't keep good notes on my findings, and I assume things have changed. Would anybody care to compare and contrast different DbC packages for Java?
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Design by Contract™ is an approach to designing robust yet simple software. It provides methodological guidelines to achieve these goals without resorting to defensive programming. Instead, Design by Contract builds class invariants and pre/post validation of methods arguments and return values into the code itself.
Design by contract also defines criteria for correctness for a software module: If the class invariant AND precondition are true before a supplier is called by a client, then the invariant AND the postcondition will be true after the service has been completed.
There is a nice overview on WikiPedia about Design by Contract, at the end there is a section regarding languages with third party support libraries, which includes a nice serie of Java libraries. Most of these Java libraries are based on Java Assertions.
In the case you only need Precondition Checking there is also a lightweight Validate Method Arguments solution, at SourceForge under Java Argument Validation (Plain Java implementation).
Depending on your problem, maybe the OVal framework, for field/property Constraints validation is a good choice. This framework lets you place the Constraints in all kind of different forms (Annotations, POJO, XML). Create customer constraints through POJO or scripting languages (JavaScript, Groovy, BeanShell, OGNL, MVEL). And it also party implements Programming by Contract.
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