Empty or null String in Java

gavin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:45:54 +0000

It’s such a common bit of code that crops up everywhere. That familiar line:

if(var != null && var.length() > 0)

There are slight variations. Some use

if(var != null && !var.equals(""))

They’re all there to achieve the same purpose: check whether a String is null or empty.

I’ve always thought “there really should be a utility for this”, but written the code anyway. Today, when faced with repeating this pattern about 10 times, I finally decided to go and check the Apache Commons Lang javadoc and see if there was such a method. Unsurprisingly, there is, in StringUtils.

There’s actually a few:

```
isBlank(String)
```
```
isEmpty(String)
```

```
isNotBlank(String)
```
```
isNotEmpty(String)
```

Very handy.

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Empty or null String in Java