What is StringUtils.isAnyBlank in Java?

Overview

isAnyBlank() is a static method of the StringUtils that accepts a list of strings and checks if any of the strings in the list are blank. The method returns true if at least one of the strings in the given list of strings is considered to be blank.

How to check if a string is blank?

If a string satisfies any of the below criteria, then it is considered blank:

  • The length of the string is zero or the string is empty
  • The string points to a null reference
  • The string contains only whitespace characters

Note: A character can be classified as a whitespace character using the method Character.isWhitespace().

How to import StringUtils?

The definition of StringUtils 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 StringUtils class as follows:

import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils;

Syntax

public static boolean isAnyBlank(final CharSequence... css)

Parameters

  • final CharSequence... cs: the list of character sequences/strings to check.

Return value

This method returns true if any of the strings in the list are blank. Otherwise, it returns false.

Code

import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils;
import java.util.Arrays;
public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String[] strings = {"hi", "educative", "indiana\tjones\n"};
        System.out.printf("The output of StringUtils.isAnyBlank() for the strings - %s is %s", Arrays.toString(strings), StringUtils.isAnyBlank(strings));
        System.out.println();
        strings = new String[]{"hi", "educative", "\n\t"};
        System.out.printf("The output of StringUtils.isAnyBlank() for the strings - %s is %s", Arrays.toString(strings), StringUtils.isAnyBlank(strings));
        System.out.println();
        strings = new String[]{"", "educative", "hello"};
        System.out.printf("The output of StringUtils.isAnyBlank() for the strings - %s is %s", Arrays.toString(strings), StringUtils.isAnyBlank(strings));
        System.out.println();
        strings = new String[]{null, "educative", "hello"};
        System.out.printf("The output of StringUtils.isAnyBlank() for the strings - %s is %s", Arrays.toString(strings), StringUtils.isAnyBlank(strings));
        System.out.println();
    }
}

Example 1

  • strings = ["hi", "educative", "indiana\njones\t"]

The method returns false because none of the strings are blank.

Example 2

  • strings = ["hi", "educative", "\n\t"]

The method returns true because one of the strings contains only whitespace characters, which are considered blank.

Example 3

  • strings = ["", "educative", "hi"]

The method returns true because one of the empty strings is considered to be a blank string.

Example 4

  • strings = [null, "educative", "hello"]

The method returns true because one of the strings points to a null reference, which is considered a blank string.

Output

The output of the code will be as follows:

The output of StringUtils.isAnyBlank() for the strings - [hi, educative, indiana	jones
] is false
The output of StringUtils.isAnyBlank() for the strings - [hi, educative, 
	] is true
The output of StringUtils.isAnyBlank() for the strings - [, educative, hello] is true
The output of StringUtils.isAnyBlank() for the strings - [null, educative, hello] is true

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