J2EE helper and handler?

Although a class's name will usually (hopefully) give some clue as to its use, there are no real hard-and-fast rules. So, take the following with a grain of salt:

> Helper generally indicates an object that has no state but does have behavior, or if the object does have state, it is generally only used for a single process. It is used for a number of scenarios, such as brokering database access, parsing strings or enforcing an algorithm or business rule.

> Handler generally indicates an object that will process a given type of request.

As you can see, the terms above are very vague, and different developers will undoubtedly have different ideas of what those words refer to. When you are stuck, see if there are Javadocs, an API specification or UML design diagrams to help you out.. If all else fails, and you have access to the source code, see if the code or comments helps your analysis.

- Saish

Saisha at 2007-7-13 14:48:09 >