(Excerpt) @Singleton Annotation: A Easier Way

Whether the singleton is pattern or an anti-pattern, there are still some cases where we need to create singletons. We're used to create a private constructor, a getInstance() method for a static field or even an initialized public static final field. So instead of writing code like this in Java:

public class T {
public static final T instance = new T();
private T() {}
}
You just need to annotate your type with the @Singleton annotation:

@Singleton class T {}
The singleton instance can then simply be accessed with T.instance (direct public field access).

You can also have the lazy loading approach with an additional annotation parameter:

@Singleton(lazy = true) class T {}
Would become more or less equivalent to this Groovy class:

class T {
private static volatile T instance
private T() {}
static T getInstance () {
if (instance) {
instance
} else {
synchronized(T) {
if (instance) {
instance
} else {
instance = new T ()
}
}
}
}
}
Lazy or not, once again, to access the instance, simply do T.instance (property access, shorcut for T.getInstance()).