Dynamically updating state before sending changes to client

There are some cases where a server-side implementation must delay some work until right before data is about to be sent to the client. Some examples of this:

An expensive operation that should be done only once and not every time some input for the calculation changes.
Anything that depends on the component (or extension) being attached to the component hierarchy.

Vaadin provides the ClientConnector.beforeClientResponse(boolean initial) method, which a server-side component or extension can override if it wants to make some final adjustments to its shared state or send some RPC right before data is being sent to the client. Because the method is called just before the data will be sent, there are some special considerations:

You should remember to call super.beforeClientResponse(initial) because e.g. AbstractComponent relies on the method for performing its own last minute changes to the state.
The component hierarchy may not be modified in the beforeClientResponse method, doing so might cause undesirable side effects.
markAsDirty() has no effect - changes will only be sent for connectors that were marked as dirty before beforeClientResponse was called.

Please note that beforeClientResponse will only be called for components that the framework thinks might have changes, e.g. because they have recently been attached, their getState() method has been called or they have been marked as dirty using markAsDirty().

This shows a simple example where two terms are summed together only once even if the terms are changed multiple times before a response is sent to the client.

public class Addition extends AbstractComponent {
  private int term1;
  private int term2;
  private boolean needsRecalculation = false;

  public void setTerm1(int value1) {
    this.term1 = value1;
    needsRecalculation = true;

    //Mark the component as dirty to ensure beforeClientResponse will be invoked
    markAsDirty();
  }

  public void setTerm2(int value2) {
    this.term2 = value2;
    needsRecalculation = true;

    //Mark the component as dirty to ensure beforeClientResponse will be invoked
    markAsDirty();
  }

  private int calculateSum() {
    return term1 + term2;
  }

  @Override
  public void beforeClientResponse(boolean initial) {
    super.beforeClientResponse(initial);
    if (needsRecalculation) {
      needsRecalculation = false;
      // This could be an expensive operation that we don't want to do every time setTerm1 or setTerm2 is invoked.
      getState().sum = calculateSum();
    }
  }

  @Override
  protected AddResultState getState() {
    return (AddResultState) super.getState();
  }
}

class AddResultState extends ComponentState {
  public int sum;
}

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Dynamically updating state before sending changes to client