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When I use jdbc to develop a small tool, where using a OR-Mapper like Hibernate is overkill, I always dislike that i have to dublicate all the "getStatement" "execQuery" "while (resultSet.next())" stuff.

i dont like to repeat stuff in my code. It would be very easy if java had closures, but i dont want to wait until java7 to simplify my code so I needet another idea.

java has no closures but it has something that can be used in a similar manner - Anonymous inner classes.

so to simplify the following class

Connection con = getConnection()
Statement st = con.createStatement();
ResultSet rs = st.executeQuery( "sqlstring");
List<Foo> result = new ArrayList<Foo>();
while (rs.next()) {
    Foo f = new Foo();
    f.setProperty1( rs.getString( "property1" ));
    f.setProperty2( rs.getString( "property2" ));
    result.add( f );
}
// imagine catch/finaly block here
st.close();
con.close();

i define a interface called Function

interface Function<T> {
    public T valueOf( ResultSet rs ) throws SQLException;
}

Then i define a QueryMapper like this

public class QueryMapper<T> {
    private Database db;
    public QueryMapper( Database db ) {
        this.db = db;
    }

    List<T> listOf( Function<T> f, String query ) {
        List<T> res = new ArrayList<T>();
        Resultset rs = ... get resultset for query ..
        while ( rs.next() ) {
            res.add( f.valueOf( rs ));
        }
        // catch/finaly block here
        return res;
    }
}

So all i have to do in my code now is calling

Function<Foo> fn = new Function<Foo>() {
    public Foo valueOf( ResultSet rs) throws SQLException {
        Foo res = new Foo();
        res.setPropery1( rs.getString( "property1" ));
        res.setPropery2( rs.getString( "property2" ));
        return res;
    }
}

QueryMapper<Foo> qm = QueryMapper<Foo>( db );
List<Foo> res = qm.listOf( fn, "select * from foo");

I can even recycle the Function objects ( if i query different object of the same type but with different ids for example ) thats more how i like it