Is it a good practice to use a single Builder pattern for both Creating and Updating an entity?

Juan Jose Yamunaque Castillo — Wed, 27 May 2026 02:29:17 +0000

I am implementing the Builder pattern in a Node.js (TypeScript) backend to instantiate a Permission object before passing it to my repository layer.I want to reuse this same Builder for both creating and updating a permission, but the presence of the id and the validation rules change completely depending on the action:

When Creating: The id attribute is never sent (the database generates it). Both name and module are strictly mandatory.
When Updating: The id is strictly mandatory. However, name and module become optional, with the condition that at least one of them must be provided (they cannot both be missing). If a field is not provided, it should remain null or undefined so the repository knows it shouldn't overwrite that specific column.

import { CustomError } from "../../../shared";

export class PermissionBuilder {
    private name: string = '';
    private module: string = '';

    constructor() {}

    setName(name: string): PermissionBuilder {
        if (!name || !name.trim()) throw CustomError.badRequest('Name cannot be empty');
        this.name = name;
        return this;
    }

    setModule(module: string): PermissionBuilder {
        if (!module || !module.trim()) throw CustomError.badRequest('Module cannot be empty');
        this.module = module;
        return this;
    }

    build(): { name: string; module: string } {
        return {
            name: this.name,
            module: this.module,
        };
    }
}

My questions are:

Is it considered a good practice to handle this conditional logic (where id is missing for creation but required for partial updates) inside a single Builder, or should I split this into two separate builders (e.g., CreatePermissionBuilder and UpdatePermissionBuilder)?
If keeping a single Builder is the right approach, how should I restructure the internal state and the build() method to handle a payload that dynamically changes its required fields based on whether an id is present or not?

DEV Community: Juan Jose Yamunaque Castillo

Is it a good practice to use a single Builder pattern for both Creating and Updating an entity?