In order to create an object, we need to define a class that's why the class is called the blueprint of the object and an immutable class is a class which we can use to create immutable objects.

What is an immutable object

An object is called immutable if its state cannot be modified by anyone in any way after its construction, here object's state means the fields or the variables it is holding.

An immutable object does not expose its state to the outer world and neither provides any behaviour to modify its state. All wrapper classes i.e IntegerFloatLong are immutable in nature and other examples of immutable classes are String, java.util.UUID, java.net.URL.

Advantages of immutable objects

In Why String is Immutable and Final in Java, I have discussed how just by being immutable in nature, String gains lots of advantages including
  1. Thread Safety, 
  2. Hash-code caching,
  3. Object pool,
  4. Security.
Same advantages are applied to other immutable objects as well.

How to create a class for an immutable object

To create an immutable object we need to define our class in a way that it restricts every one (including itself) from changing the state of the object after its construction, and in order to do so we need to
  1. Mark your class final,
  2. Mark all the fields private,
  3. Mark all fields final as well,
  4. Provide an argument constructor with all initialization logic,
  5. Initialize all mutable fields by deep copying,
  6. Do not provide setters for your fields,
  7. Return a deep copy of mutable fields from the getters.
How-to-Create-an-Immutable-Class-in-Java-with-Example

Let's look at all these rules and the reasons to follow them

1. Why mark our class final

We should declare our class final to forbids its extension so no one can extend our class and destroy its immutability. If it is not final then in future someone might extend it and modify the behaviour to change the state.

2. Why mark all the fields private

We should mark all the fields private so no one can access them outside of the class.

3. Why mark all fields final as well

Mark all the fields final so even we will not be able to change the fields outside of the constructor.

4. Why provide an argument constructor with all initialization logic

A constructor is a place to write our object initialization logic because constructor gets called whenever we create an object.

So when we want to set our object's state during object creation only, we need to set it in the constructor and that's why we need to have an argument constructor in case of an immutable class.

As discussed in 5 different ways to create objects and creating objects through reflection, serialization and cloning also create new objects but both of them does not include a constructor call. But we do not need to worry about it because in both ways object will be constructed from an already present object which will be already immutable in nature.

5. Why initialize all mutable fields by deep copying

If our immutable object holds a reference to other immutable objects i.e. String, Integer we do not need to worry because we know they will not allow any change in their state.

But if our object holds references to some mutable objects and those mutable objects are also getting referred from somewhere else, in that case, our object's immutability is in danger.

In our example, our ImmutableEmployee class holds a reference to Date class which is mutable in nature. In below lines of code we are creating a variable dob which is holding a Date object and then we are passing it to ImmutableEmployee's constructor and creating an object which is being referred from employee.

Date dob = new Date();
ImmutableEmployee employee = new ImmutableEmployee(1, "Naresh", dob);

When we SysOut employee object we will get

ImmutableEmployee{id=1, name='Naresh', dob=Sun Jan 10 00:12:00 IST 1993}

Now if we do not initialize dob fields by deep copying then both dob and employee.dob will point to a single object and if we change anything in dob, employee.dob will also reflect that change which means employee object will become mutable.

But by deep copying dob field both employee.dob and dob will point to two different objects and we will not face this problem, as you can see output of below code

dob.setMonth(1);
System.out.println(dob); // Prints - Wed Feb 10 00:12:00 IST 1993

System.out.println(employee.getDob()); // Prints - Sun Jan 10 00:12:00 IST 1993
System.out.println(employee); // Prints - ImmutableEmployee{id=1, name='Naresh', dob=Sun Jan 10 00:12:00 IST 1993}

In our example, I have used the copy constructor this.dob = new Date(dob.getTime()); to copy our objects because there are some basic problems with Java cloning and we can not sure of either it is a deep copy or shallow copy without seeing cloning code of that class.

You can read more about cloning, cloning types and why copy constructors are better than on more detailed articles such as Java Cloning And Types Of Cloning (Shallow and Deep), Java Cloning - Copy Constructor Versus Cloning and Java Cloning - Even Copy Constructors Are Not Sufficient.

6. Why should not provide setters for your fields

Well, providing setters will allow us to modify the state of the object which we do not want.

7. Why return a deep copy of mutable fields instead of returning objects from the getters.

If we return all mutable fields directly, we will face the same scenario as discussed in point 5 and after executing below code both employee.dob and temp will point to the same object, now if we make any change in temp, employee.dob will also change which again means employee will not remain immutable.

So instead of returning mutable fields, we should return their deep copy and as we have done that, we can see in below code employee remains same and immutable at the end.

Date temp = employee.getDob();
temp.setMonth(2);
System.out.println(temp); // Prints - Wed Mar 10 00:12:00 IST 1993

System.out.println(employee.getDob()); // Prints - Sun Jan 10 00:12:00 IST 1993
System.out.println(employee); // Prints - ImmutableEmployee{id=1, name='Naresh', dob=Sun Jan 10 00:12:00 IST 1993}

In the end, I wanted to say that all immutable objects in Java are effective immutable not completely immutable because we can modify them using reflection.

Below is the complete source code to create an immutable class which you can also find on this Github Repository and please feel free to provide your valuable feedback.

// 1. Declare your class as final, So other classes can't extend it and break its immutability
final class ImmutableEmployee {

    // 2. Make all your fields private they can't be accessed outside your class
    // 3. Mark them as final so no one can modify them anywhere else apart from the constructor, if you do not have any specific requirement to not do so
    private final int id;
    private final String name;
    private final Date dob;

    // 4. Create an constructor with argument so you can assign instantiate your object with a proper state
    public ImmutableEmployee(int id, String name, Date dob) {
        this.id = id;
        this.name = name;
        // 5. Initialise all your fields by deeply copying them if they are not immutable in nature
        this.dob = new Date(dob.getTime());
    }

    // 6. Do not provide setters for your fields, or define them private if you have some requirement
    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    // 7. Instead of returning objects from the getters return deep copy them if your objects are not immutable
    public Date getDob() {
        return new Date(dob.getTime());
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "ImmutableEmployee{" +
                "id=" + id +
                ", name='" + name + '\'' +
                ", dob=" + dob +
                '}';
    }

}

public class ImmutableClassExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {
        Date dob = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-mm-yyyy").parse("10-12-1993");
        ImmutableEmployee employee = new ImmutableEmployee(1, "Naresh", dob);

        System.out.println(employee); // Prints - ImmutableEmployee{id=1, name='Naresh', dob=Sun Jan 10 00:12:00 IST 1993}

        dob.setMonth(1);
        System.out.println(dob); // Prints - Wed Feb 10 00:12:00 IST 1993

        Date temp = employee.getDob();
        temp.setMonth(2);
        System.out.println(temp); // Prints - Wed Mar 10 00:12:00 IST 1993

        System.out.println(employee.getDob()); // Prints - Sun Jan 10 00:12:00 IST 1993
        System.out.println(employee); // Prints - ImmutableEmployee{id=1, name='Naresh', dob=Sun Jan 10 00:12:00 IST 1993}
    }
}


While coding in any programming language we always require some predefined types which we can use to write the code and every programming language provides these types in its way e.g. Java provides primitive types (int, long, char float etc) and reference types (custom types like Object, String, Thread).

For string manipulation, Java provides a class java.lang.String which gives us a way to create string objects and provides different behaviors to operate on those objects e.g. replace(), length()


String name = "Naresh";
System.out.print(name.length());
System.out.print(name.isEmpty());

Whenever we talk about String class in Java we say it is immutable in nature and all string literals are stored in String Constant Pool (SCP).

Prior to Java 7 String Constant Pool belongs to Permanent Generation area of heap which means Garbage Collector will not touch it in normal scenarios. But from Java 7 onwards string constant pool is not part of Perm Gen but live with out in heap which means now unused String objects will get garbage collected.

And in order to become a good developer, we should always know why these kinds of design decisions were taken. I mean, we should know why String is immutable or why string objects stored in SCP.

In Why String is Stored in String Constant Pool article, I have discussed why string objects are stored in a separate memory area called constant pool and in this article, I will discuss why String class was made immutable.

String is Effective Immutable not Completely Immutable

In normal scenarios, String objects are immutable and can't be modified but we can modify them by using Java reflection API. Every string object holds a char[] array as a private variable which actually holds every character from our string.

why-string-is-immutable-and-final-in-java

Due to the private nature of the char[] array, we cannot access it from outside of string object and none of the string methods modifies it.

But we can access this char[] array via reflection and then modify it, And that's why instead of calling String immutable we can call it Effective Immutable.

String string = "Naresh";

Class<String> type = String.class;
Field field = type.getDeclaredField("value");
field.setAccessible(true);

char[] value = (char[]) field.get(string);
value[0] = 'M'; // No `string` variable becomes `Maresh`


Why String is Final

As discussed in How to Create an Immutable Class in Java, in order to make a class immutable we need to make sure no one extends our class and destroy its immutability.

So String is made final to not allow others to extend it and destroy its immutability.

Why String is Immutable

However we can not be sure of what was Java designers actually thinking while designing String but we can only conclude these reasons based on the advantages we get out of string immutability, Some of which are as follows.

1. The existence of String Constant Pool

As discussed in Why String is Stored in String Constant Pool, In order provide a business functionality, every application creates too many string objects and in order to save JVM from first creating lots of string objects and then garbage collecting them. JVM stores all string objects in a separate memory area called String constant pool and reuses objects from that cached pool.

Whenever we create a string literal JVM first sees if that literal is already present in constant pool or not and if it is there, the new variable will start pointing to the same object in SCP this process is called String Interning.

String a = "Naresh";
String b = "Naresh";
String c = "Naresh";

In above example string object with value Naresh will get created in SCP only once and all variables a, b, c will point to the same object but what if we try to make change in a e.g. a.replace("a", "").

Ideally a should have value Nresh but b, c should remain unchanged because as the end user we are making change in a only. And as a developer we know a, b, c all are pointing the same object so if we make a change in a, others should also reflect the change.

string-constant-pool-in-java

But String's immutability saves us from this scenario and due to which object Naresh will never change. So when we make any change in a, JVM will create a new object assign it to a, and then make the change to that object instead of changing object Naresh.

So having a string pool is only possible because of String's immutability and if String would not have been immutable, then caching string objects and reusing them would not have been a possibility because any variable would have changed the value and corrupted others.

2. Thread Safety

An object is called thread-safe when multiple threads are operating on it but none of them is able to corrupt its state and object holds the same state for every thread at any point in time.

As we know an immutable object cannot be modified by anyone after its creation which makes every immutable object thread safe by default. We do not need to apply any thread safety measures to it such as creating synchronized methods.

So due to its immutable nature string object can be shared by multiple threads and even if it is getting manipulated by many threads it will not change its value.

3. Security

In every application, we need to pass several secrets e.g. user's user-name\passwords, connection URLs and in general, all of this information is passed as string objects.

Now suppose if String would not have been immutable in nature then it could cause serious security threats to the application because these values will be allowed to get changed and if it is allowed then these might get changed due to wrongly written code or by any other person who has access to our variable references.

4. Class Loading

As discussed in Creating objects through Reflection in Java with Example, we can use Class.forName("class_name") method to load a class in memory which again calls other methods to do so and even JVM uses these methods to load classes.

But if you see clearly all of these methods accepts the class name as a string object so Strings are used in java class loading and String's immutability makes sure that correct class is getting loaded by ClassLoader.

Suppose if String would not have been immutable and we are trying to load java.lang.Object which get changed to org.theft.OurObject in between and now all of our objects have a behavior which someone can use to do unwanted things.

5. HashCode Caching

If we are going to perform any hashing related operations on our object we must override the hashCode() method and try to generate an accurate hashcode by using the state of the object. If object's state is getting changed which means its hashcode should also change.

Because String is immutable so the value one string object is holding will never get changed which means its hashcode will also not change which gives String class an opportunity to cache its hashcode during object creation.

Yes, String object caches its hashcode at the time of object creation which makes it a great candidate for hashing related operations because hashcode doesn't need to be calculated again and again which save us some time and this is why String is the most suitable candidate to be used as HashMap keys.

Disadvantages of String Immutability


There are always two sides to a coin, whenever something is providing us some benefits it will also a have some drawbacks and String's immutability also falls into it.

1. PermGen Space Error

Due to the immutability of String, string object can't be changed and whenever we make a change on it, JVM creates a new string object. So if there are 10000 string object in an application and every string object is getting manipulated 10 times then we are left with 110000 string objects.

And as we know strings are stored in a separate constant pool which is part of Permanent Generation, which usually occupies very limited memory as compared to young and old generations. Having too many String literals will quickly fill this space, resulting in java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen Space error.

2. Keeping passwords in memory for a long time

In general, passwords are stored as strings and strings are stored in the constant pool which is exempted from normal garbage collection cycles. So our password might remain in memory for very long time and someone can take advantage of it.

This is the reason standards suggest to hold password in an char[] array instead of the string object.

3. String is not extensible

Making String final is part of making it immutable but it also becomes a disadvantage because it limits its extensibility and we cannot extend String to provide more functionality.

For some developers, it becomes a problem when they require some extra behavior for their string objects but it's not a disadvantage and it can be tacked by creating a utility method which accepts the string as a parameter.

You can find complete code on this Github Repository and please feel free to provide your valuable feedback.


In a previous article Why String is Immutable and Final in Java, I have discussed why String is immutable in nature and advantages and disadvantages String's immutability gives us.

I have also discussed that, all String literals are cached into a special memory area called String Constant Pool and how String's immutability made String constant pool possible.

But the question arises why do Java required a separate constant pool to store Strings, What's the reason, Why strings are not stored in the normal heap memory like other objects do and in this article, I will try to answer these questions.

String Interning

Well, we know String is the most popular type present in Java and almost all Java programs use it. In fact, I have not seen a single Java program which is written without using String.

In general, a normal Java business application deals with thousands of string objects, lots of them have the same value associated and lots of them are mid operations string means they are not the final result.

So if we store all those string objects in normal heap memory, lot's of the heap will be acquired by just string objects only, and the garbage collector will have to run more frequently which will decrease the performance of the application.

And that's why we have String Constant Pool and String interning process, whenever we create a string literal JVM first sees if that literal is already present in the constant pool or not and if it is there, the new variable will start pointing to the same object, this process is called String Interning.

There are two ways to create a String object
  1. Creating String Literal:: Anything which comes under "" is a string literal e.g. String s1 = "Naresh", by default all string literals interned and goes to SCP.
  1. Creating a String object using constructor: If we create a String object using the constructor e.g. String s2 = new String("Naresh"), the object is created in normal heap memory instead of SCP. And that's why creating String object using constructor is not considered a best practice. We can ask s2 to point to SCP instead of normal heap manually by calling intern() method on it i.e. s2.intern().
So in order to save memory consumed by string objects, Java allows more than one reference variable to point to the same object if they have the same value. That's why JVM creators have created a separate memory area SCP for string literals and made a rule that if more than one string variable holding same value than they will point to the same object.

String a = "Naresh";
String b = "Naresh";
String c = "Naresh";

For above code there will be only one object Naresh will be created and all reference variables a, b, c will point to the same object.

In above example string object with value Naresh will get created in SCP only once and all reference a, b, c will point to same object but what if we try to make a change in a e.g. a.replace("a", "").

Ideally, a should have value Nresh but b, c should remain unchanged because as an end user we are making the change in a only. And we know a, b, c all are pointing the same object so if we make a change in a, others should also reflect the change.

string-constant-pool-in-java

But string immutability saves us from this scenario and due to the immutability of string object string object Naresh will never change. So when we make any change in a instead of change in string object Naresh JVM creates a new object assign it to a and then make the change in that object.

So String pool is only possible because of String's immutability and if String would not have been immutable, then caching string objects and reusing them would not have a possibility because any variable would have changed the value and corrupted others.

You can find complete code on this Github Repository and please feel free to provide your valuable feedback.

Java allows us to declare a variable whenever we need it, We can categorize all our variables into 3 categories which have different-different scopes
  1. Instance Variables - are defined inside a class and have object level scope.
  2. Class Variables - are defined inside a class with static keyword, these variables have a class level scope and are common to all objects of the same class
  3. Local Variables - are defined inside a method or in any conditional block, have the block-level scope and only accessible in the block where it defined.
what-is-variable-hiding-shadowing

What is Variable Shadowing

Variable shadowing happens when we define a variable in a closure scope with a variable name and we have already defined a variable in outer scope with the same name.

In other words, when a local variable has the same name as one of the instance variable, the local variable shadows the instance variable inside the method block.

In the following example, there is an instance variable named x and inside method printLocalVariable(), we are shadowing it by the local variable x.

class Parent {

    // Declaring instance variable by name `x`
    String x = "Parent`s Instance Variable";

    public void printInstanceVariable() {
        System.out.println(x);
    }

    public void printLocalVariable() {
        // Shadowing instance variable `x` by a local variable with same name
        String x = "Local Variable";
        System.out.println(x);

        // If we still want to access instance variable, we do that by using `this.x`
        System.out.println(this.x);
    }
}

What is variable Hiding

Variable Hiding happens when we define a variable in child class with a variable name which we have already used to define a variable in the parent class. A child class can declare a variable with the same name as an inherited variable from its parent class, thus hiding the inherited variable.

In other words, when the child and parent class both have a variable with same name child class's variable hides parent class's variable.

In the below example, we are hiding the variable named x in the child class while it is already defined by its parent class.

class Child extends Parent {

    // Hiding Parent class's variable `x` by defining a variable in child class with same name.
    String x = "Child`s Instance Variable";

    @Override
    public void printInstanceVariable() {
        System.out.print(x);

        // If we still want to access variable from super class, we do that by using `super.x`
        System.out.print(", " + super.x + "\n");
    }
}

Variable Hiding is not the same as Method Overriding

While variable hiding looks like overriding a variable similar to method overriding but it is not, Overriding is applicable only to methods while hiding is applicable variables.

In the case of method overriding, overridden methods completely replaces the inherited methods so when we try to access the method from parent's reference by holding child's object, the method from child class gets called. You can read more about overriding on Everything About Method Overloading Vs Method Overriding, Why We Should Follow Method Overriding Rules, How Does JVM Handle Method Overloading and Overriding Internally.

But in variable hiding child class hides the inherited variables instead of replacing, so when we try to access the variable from parent's reference by holding child's object, it will be accessed from the parent class.

When an instance variable in a subclass has the same name as an instance variable in a super class, then the instance variable is chosen from the reference type.

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

    Parent parent = new Parent();
    parent.printInstanceVariable(); // Output - "Parent`s Instance Variable"
    System.out.println(parent.x); // Output - "Parent`s Instance Variable"

    Child child = new Child();
    child.printInstanceVariable();// Output - "Child`s Instance Variable, Parent`s Instance Variable"
    System.out.println(child.x);// Output - "Child`s Instance Variable"

    parent = child; // Or parent = new Child();
    parent.printInstanceVariable();// Output - "Child`s Instance Variable, Parent`s Instance Variable"
    System.out.println(parent.x);// Output - Parent`s Instance Variable

    // Accessing child's variable from parent's reference by type casting
    System.out.println(((Child) parent).x);// Output - "Child`s Instance Variable"
}

In above example when we call overridden method printInstanceVariable() on parent while holding Child's object in it we can see the output is Child`s Instance Variable, Parent`s Instance Variable because in child class method is printing Child class's x variable and super.x.

But when we call System.out.println(parent.variable); on same parent reference which is holding child's object, it prints Parents Instance Variable because new Child() object keeps parent's x as well as child's x and hides parent's x. So, in this case, x is chosen from the class that is the reference type.

But if we wanted to access child's variable even if we are using parent reference we can do that by using (Child) parent).variable.

When our variables are private or is in another package and has default access, such variables are not visible outside that class and child class cannot access them. So there no confusion and that is why we should always stick to General Guidelines to create POJOs and declare our variables with private access and also provide proper get/set methods to access them.

Do you want to know more about variable hiding?, In the article Why Instance Variable Of Super Class Is Not Overridden In Sub Class,  I have discussed why variables do not follow overriding, why variable hiding is not designed same as method overriding and why instance variable is chosen from reference type instead of the object? Please go ahead and read it.

You can find complete code on this Github Repository and please feel free to provide your valuable feedback.

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