I'm not saying it's the best way, or anything, but my preference when coding is to write the least number of lines possible.

Going back to the OutputWindow class I talked about last month, you create and display it like this:

OutputWindow output = new OutputWindow();
output.show();

But that's two lines of code, where the following single line would feel more natural, to me at least:

OutputWindow output = new OutputWindow().show();

Maybe it's just me?

Either way, if you don't know how to write a class that allows "chaining" of methods, read on.

This approach uses a Fluent Interface and it's very easy to achieve. Here's the basic code for the class, written in such a way so as to allow "chaining":

class OutputWindow{
  public OutputWinow(){
    //construct it
  }

  public OutputWindow show(){
    //show it
    return this;
  }
}

Notice how the return type of the show() method is an object of the same class and that the method now returns the "this" object, whereas before the return type was void and it returned nothing.

That's all there is to it!

Taking it even further you could end up writing code like below if you change the setTitle and println method to also return "this".

OutputWindow out = new OutputWindow().setTitle("Test").show().println("Line 1");