Java : Removing unwanted characters of an object with clean code

Question

I have an object retrieved from a form. It can contains some unwanted characters like "/n". I would like to remove them. I've found a way of doing it but I'm pretty sure it's possible to do it in a cleaner and shorter way?

List<Client> clients1 = pc.getClients();
List<Client> clients2 =new ArrayList<Client>();

if (clients1 != null) {
    for (Client tc : clients1) {    
        tc.setClientId(tc.getClientId().replaceAll("\\p{C}", ""));
        tc.setClientName(tc.getClientName().replaceAll("\\p{C}", ""));
        tc.setCallFirstName(tc.getClientFirstName().replaceAll("\\{C}",""));
        clients2.add(tc);
    }
}

pc.setClients(client2)

Any suggestions? The point of this question for me is to learn how to make better code.

Why do you create a new list when you set the replaced strings to the existing `Client`s? — daniu, Aug 22 '18 at 08:50
https://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2016/02/how-to-remove-all-special-characters-of-String-in-java.html — a3.14_Infinity, Aug 22 '18 at 08:51
hold on. You should let only certain characters to be allowed in form. like ^[a-zA-Z]+$ for first name and client name. — Faraz, Aug 22 '18 at 08:58
@kayaman. I thought that it could be done in one line using lamba expression. — Jean, Aug 22 '18 at 09:00
Using an array you can try the following solution: removing-element-from-object-array-with-linq-js [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39385947/removing-element-from-object-array-with-linq-js — Dimitri, Aug 22 '18 at 09:00
@FarazDurrani why? Why can't the OP support other characters in the names? If those names aren't used in situations where chinese, arabic etc. characters would cause problems then why not allow them? — Thomas, Aug 22 '18 at 09:01
@FarazDurrani huh? Did that question put you under pressure? As for me, I'm chilled ;) — Thomas, Aug 23 '18 at 07:39

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 22 '18 at 08:59

The "clean code" answer would be framed around the Tell, don't ask principle.

In your case: you are first fetching (asking!) some attribute from a Client object, to make changes to that, to re-set the property.

Why not just go and tell the Client tc.normalizeFields() or something alike?!

Meaning: instead of having another class cleaning up fields of the Client class, put all of that code into the Client class itself! And have one method that internally works all fields that require "cleaning". So that when fields are added or removed, other classes do not need to be changed. The code you are showing needs to be updated each time you add/remove/change your fields.

When your Client class is more of a bean/data thing (that only carries around data, without any specific behavior, aka methods of its own), then you should consider to use a separate ClientNormalizerService class that encapsulates this work for you.

Java : Removing unwanted characters of an object with clean code

1 Answers1