Question about builder passing null will send unnecessary info over the network?

[shiywang]

So we have APIRequest has a, b, c, but c could be potential null we are thinking about write like this:

APIRequest.Builder builder = APIRequest.builder()
                .fieldA(A)
                .fieldB(B);
 
if(APIRequest. getC() != null) {
    builder.fieldC(APIRequest.getC());
}
return builder.build();

instead of

return APIRequest.builder()
                .fieldA(A)
                .fieldB(B)
                .fieldC(APIRequest.getC()).build();

Are those two the same? which one is better? (option 2 looks def cleaner) but if C is null, will the second option send more data via network? or it depends on the implementation of client?

[debora-ito]

Passing a null value forward can lead to NullPointerExceptions, which can be hard to troubleshoot. Having null checks is a best practice and there are several ways to do them, but implementation details are not in the scope of this channel. I recommend you search for Java programming best practices regarding nulls.