What is ObjectUtils.anyNull in Java?

anyNull() is a staticthe methods in Java that can be called without creating an object of the class. method of the ObjectUtils class, that is used to check if any of the values in an array point to a null reference.

  • The method returns false if none of the values are null or the array is empty.
  • The method returns true if any of the values are null or the array is null.

How to import ObjectUtils

The definition of ObjectUtils can be found in the Apache Commons Lang package, which we can add to the Maven project by adding the following dependency to the pom.xml file.

<dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
            <version>3.12.0</version>
</dependency>

For other versions of the commons-lang package, refer to the Maven Repository.

You can import the ObjectUtils class as follows.

import org.apache.commons.lang3.ObjectUtils;

Syntax

public static boolean anyNull(final Object... values)

Parameters

final Object... values: The list of objects to test.

Return value

This method returns true if any of the values are null or the array is null. Otherwise, it returns false.

Code

import org.apache.commons.lang3.ObjectUtils;
import java.util.Arrays;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Object[] objects = {"hi", 3, 3.24};
System.out.printf("The output of ObjectUtils.anyNull() for the string - '%s' is %s", Arrays.toString(objects), ObjectUtils.anyNull(objects));
System.out.println();
objects = null;
System.out.printf("The output of ObjectUtils.anyNull() for the string - '%s' is %s", Arrays.toString(objects), ObjectUtils.anyNull(objects));
System.out.println();
objects = new Object[]{null, null, null};
System.out.printf("The output of ObjectUtils.anyNull() for the string - '%s' is %s", Arrays.toString(objects), ObjectUtils.anyNull(objects));
System.out.println();
objects = new Object[]{1.2, null, null};
System.out.printf("The output of ObjectUtils.anyNull() for the string - '%s' is %s", Arrays.toString(objects), ObjectUtils.anyNull(objects));
System.out.println();
objects = new Object[0];
System.out.printf("The output of ObjectUtils.anyNull() for the string - '%s' is %s", Arrays.toString(objects), ObjectUtils.anyNull(objects));
System.out.println();
}
}

Output

The output of the code will be as follows.

The output of ObjectUtils.anyNull() for the string - '[hi, 3, 3.24]' is false
The output of ObjectUtils.anyNull() for the string - 'null' is true
The output of ObjectUtils.anyNull() for the string - '[null, null, null]' is true
The output of ObjectUtils.anyNull() for the string - '[1.2, null, null]' is true
The output of ObjectUtils.anyNull() for the string - '[]' is false

Example 1

  • objects = ["hi", 3, 3.24]

The method returns false because none of the objects in the list is null.

Example 2

  • objects = null

The method returns true because the array/list of objects points to null.

Example 3

  • objects = [null, null, null]

The method returns true because all the values in the array/list of objects point to null.

Example 4

  • objects = [1.2, null, null]

The method returns true because at least one of the objects in the list is null.

Example 5

  • objects = []

The method returns false because the array/list of objects is empty.

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