Should all classes have a .equals and .hashcode method?

Question

I'm working on a unit testing project where the asserts call the .equals method. However the people on the project before didn't generate these methods.

Is it considered best practice to auto generate these methods as you code? Should all coders be doing this?

I was searching for more information on the .equals and .hashcode method and most of them seem to be geared towards how to implement or override them.

Answer 1

It's mostly a question of taste - if you don't expect to use the equals method (e.g., aren't using assertEquals, never mean to use this class as a key in a Map, etc), writing it means you may be writing dead code, and some conventions would advocate avoiding it.

Here, there doesn't seem to be a question - if you intend to use assertEquals, you need an the equals method implemented. If you're going to implement it, you should probably also implement hashCode in order to future proof your code against sneaky, hard to find, bugs.