Use JSR 305 Nullable/Nonnull annotations?

Open
#17 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

@joshafeinberg is already working on this.

Since May 5, 2026.

  • #561 by @joshafeinberg — open

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
java
Domain
api

Research direction

Start with the DbxClient API examples in the issue and inspect linked pull request #561 to understand the current implementation status. Check how startGetFile and getMetadata are declared, then review the surrounding public API for other nullable values. Done means the intended JSR 305 annotations are applied consistently and the API builds successfully.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

dropbox enhancement

Such annotations can help immensely when programming with the API, as it tells the API user what to expect.

Two examples from DbxClient:

  • .startGetFile() can have null as its second argument; it will also never return null; therefore:
@Nonnull
DbxClient.Downloader startGetFile(String path, @Nullable String rev)
  • .getMetadata() can return null:
@Nullable
DbxEntry getMetadata(String path)
Dominant language
Java
Stars
627
Forks
463
Avg merge
5m
Merged PRs (30d)
10

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from dropbox/dropbox-sdk-java

All issues in dropbox/dropbox-sdk-java

Similar issues

More Java issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.