Getters and setters for List in Spring boot

Question

I am creating my API in Spring Boot. I have that a product is composed of components:

Here is my code: (Entity Layer)

import javax.persistence.*;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.ArrayList;

@Table
@Entity
public class Product{
   @Id @GeneratedValue
   private Long id;
   private String name;
   @OneToMany
   @JoinColumn
   private List<Component> productComponents = new ArrayList<>();

   //default constructor
   public Product(){

   }
   
   public Product(Long id, String name, List<Component> productComponents){
      this.id = id;
      this.name = name;
      this.productComponents = productComponents;
   }

  //getters
  public Long getId(){
     return this.id;
  }

  public String getName(){
     return this.name;
  }

  public List<Component> getProductComponents(){
     return this.productComponents;
  }


  //setters
  public void setId(Long id){
     this.id = id;
  }

 public void setName(String name){
    this.name = name;
 }

 public void setProductComponents(List<Component> productComponents){
    this.productComponents = productComponents;
 }

 public void addProductComponent(Component component) {
    this.productComponents.add(component);
 }

public void removeProductComponent(Component component) {
    this.productComponents.remove(component);
}

}

My Question:

In the controller class should I change the update method to be as follows, to have the following code, product.addProduct(myComponent) or should I have it as follows: product.setProductComponents((Component) myProduct.getProductComponents()) :

import java.util.List;

@CrossOrigin
@RestController
@RequestMapping("/api/products/product")
public class ProductController {
    private static ProductRepository myProductRepository;

    @PutMapping("/update/{id}")
    public Product updateProduct(@RequestBody Product myProduct, @RequestBody Component myComponent, @PathVariable Long id){
        return myProductRepository.findById(id).map((product) ->{
           product.setName(myProduct.getName());
           //updated code
           product.setProductComponents(myProduct.getProductComponents());
           product.addProductComponent(myComponent);
           ///////
        return myProductRepository.save(product);
    }).orElseGet(() ->{
       myProduct.setId(id);
       return myProductRepository.save(myProduct);
    });
}

or is there a better solution?

Answer 1

I would suggest to have

public List<Component> getProductComponents(){
    return this.productComponents;
}

public void setProductComponents(List<Component> productComponents){
    this.productComponents = productComponents;
}

Plus for convenience:

public void addProductComponent(Component component) {
   this.productComponents.add(component);
}

public void removeProductComponent(Component component) {
   this.productComponents.remove(component);
}

Answer 2

I prefer first one. Reason being

1. I can create an initial object easily by passing the components List

product.setProductComponents((Component) myProduct.getProductComponents())

getProductComponents well return list I assume. Do this will not work

Better idea is to keet getter and setter dumbest. Advantage is you can omit them in future with libraries like lombok

And you can always add utility methods