Creating API that is fluent

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This article explains it much better than I ever could.

EDIT, can’t squeeze this in a comment…

There are two sides to interfaces, the implementation and the usage. There’s more work to be done on the creation side, I agree with that, however the main benefits can be found on the usage side of things. Indeed, for me the main advantage of fluent interfaces is a more natural, easier to remember and use and why not, more aesthetically pleasing API. And just maybe, the effort of having to squeeze an API in a fluent form may lead to better thought out API?

As Martin Fowler says in the original article about fluent interfaces:

Probably the most important thing to
notice about this style is that the
intent is to do something along the
lines of an internal
DomainSpecificLanguage. Indeed this is
why we chose the term ‘fluent’ to
describe it, in many ways the two
terms are synonyms. The API is
primarily designed to be readable and
to flow. The price of this fluency is
more effort, both in thinking and in
the API construction itself. The
simple API of constructor, setter, and
addition methods is much easier to
write. Coming up with a nice fluent
API requires a good bit of thought.

As in most cases API’s are created once and used over and over again, the extra effort may be worth it.

And verbose? I’m all for verbosity if it serves the readability of a program.

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