lazy-j: Lazy Java initialization library

Coming from the C# world, while working on Android projects I've often had the overwhelming desire to use something similar to the Lazy class that is in the Standard libs for .Net. Using it, you can easily initialize any object lazily without needing to implement your own double-check locked lazy initialization code.

So in a hasty moment, I wrote a library called lazy-j which supposedly guarantees your object will lazily be created the first time it is requested, using the supplied initialization function. It should also be thread-safe. It is also EXCEEDINGLY simple, here's the source:

package com.namehillsoftware.lazyj;

public abstract class AbstractSynchronousLazy<T> implements CreateAndHold<T> {

	private T object;

	private RuntimeException exception;

	public boolean isCreated() {
		return object != null || exception != null;
	}

	public final T getObject() {
		return isCreated() ? object : getValueSynchronized();
	}

	private synchronized T getValueSynchronized() {
		if (!isCreated()) {
			try {
				object = create();
			} catch (RuntimeException e) {
				exception = e;
			} catch (Exception e) {
				exception = new RuntimeException(e);
			}
		}

		if (exception != null)
			throw exception;

		return object;
	}

	protected abstract T create() throws Exception;
}

There's some nice things here; it uses Java's built in synchronized methods to do a double-checked lock for object initialization. It doesn't have all the niceties of Microsoft's library (such as different degrees of thread-safety), but it gets the job done nicely while being simple enough to understand at a glance.

Usage

Usage is also fairly simple. To install via gradle add this to your build.gradle:

dependencies {
	compile 'com.namehillsoftware:lazy-j:0.9.0'
}

To instantiate a new object do something like below:

class MyClass {
    .
    .
    .

    public static CreateAndHold<MyCrazySingletonConfig> myCrazySingletonConfig = new AbstractSynchronousLazy<MyCrazySingletonConfig>() {
		@Override
		protected MyCrazySingletonConfig create() {
			final MyCrazySingletonConfig newConfig = .....

			return newConfig;
		}
	};    
}

class SomeOtherClassThatNeedsConfig {

    public void doingThingsWithConfig() {
        final String property = MyClass.myCrazySingletonConfig.getObject().getMyCrazyProperty();
    }
}