Fluent interfaces (method chaining) with backwards navigation

Question

I need to build a class which makes use of method chaining. I understand the concept of method chaining. Example:

class Company
{
    private String companyName;
    public setCompanyName(String companyName)
    {
        this.companyName = companyName;
        return this;
    }

    public Person addPerson(String name)
    {
         person = new Person();
         person.setName(name);

         return person;
    }
}

class Person
{
    private String name;
    private String address;
    private bool license

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

    public Person hasDriverLicense(bool license)
    {
        this.license = license;
        return this;
    }

    public Person setAddress(String address)
    {
        this.address = address;
        return this;
    }
}

//in some other class / method i do:
Company company = new Company()
.setCompanyName("SomeCompany")
.addPerson("Mike")
.setAddress("Street 118");

But i need to take this one step further. I need to be able to do this:

Company company = new Company()
.setCompanyName("SomeCompany")
.addPerson("Mike")
.setAddress("Street 118");
.addPerson("Jane")
.setAddress("Street 342");
.hasDriverLicense(true)

So as you can see i need to be able to continue with chaining. The method addAddress isn't always the last method in the chain. It can be any method from the Person class.

Is there a good way to achieve this functionality? Perhaps with method extensions or something?

Any help / examples are greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can do it. Which dos not imply that you should:

The methods of Person and Company should simply return an object that aggregates the person and the company in the context. If you have an IPerson interface and ICompany interface, this type will implement both, hold references to both internally and will dispatch the calls appropriately. (Calls to IPerson method will be delegated to the internal IPerson).

That being said, I would strongly discourage you from taking this path. It is confusing, very hard to Debug and violates basic OO principles (e.g. Interface Segregation).