CodeSOD: We Know How This Works

One of the selling points of a language like Java is that it comes with a rich standard library of useful classes. This allows developers to completely ignore those useful features, and instead reinvent the wheel badly. Once this novel square wheel has come off the assembly line, it becomes the defacto standard for the organization.

Take, for example, Caiwan's office. They have a" special date-handling library.

public class DateUtil { private static final String DOT = "."; private static final String DATE_REGEX = "^(" + "((\\d{4})\\.(\\d{2})\\.(\\d{2})\\.?)" + "|" + "((\\d{4})(\\d{2})(\\d{2}))" + ")?$"; private static final Pattern DATE_PATTERN = Pattern.compile(DATE_REGEX); // lengths for months: 0th Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec private static final int[] MONTH_LENGTHS = {31, 31, 29, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31}; private DateUtil() {} public static boolean isValid(String input) { if (StringUtils.isEmpty(input)) { return true; } Matcher matcher = DATE_PATTERN.matcher(input); if (!matcher.matches()) { return false; } if (matcher.group(2) != null) { return isValidDate(matcher.group(3), matcher.group(4), matcher.group(5)); } else if (matcher.group(6) != null) { return isValidDate(matcher.group(7), matcher.group(8), matcher.group(9)); } return false; } public static String getSimpleValue(String input) { if (!StringUtils.isEmpty(input)) { Matcher matcher = DATE_PATTERN.matcher(input); if (matcher.matches()) { if (matcher.group(2) != null) { return matcher.group(3) + matcher.group(4) + matcher.group(5); } else if (matcher.group(6) != null) { return matcher.group(7) + matcher.group(8) + matcher.group(9); } } } return input; } public static String getFormattedValue(String input) { if (!StringUtils.isEmpty(input)) { Matcher matcher = DATE_PATTERN.matcher(input); if (matcher.matches()) { if (matcher.group(2) != null) { return matcher.group(3) + DOT + matcher.group(4) + DOT + matcher.group(5) + DOT; } else if (matcher.group(6) != null) { return matcher.group(7) + DOT + matcher.group(8) + DOT + matcher.group(9) + DOT; } } } return input; } public static boolean isValidSzulIdo(String input) { if (StringUtils.isEmpty(input)) { return true; } if (!isValid(input)) { return false; } Matcher matcher = DATE_PATTERN.matcher(input); if (!matcher.matches()) { return false; } String yearStr = ""; if (matcher.group(2) != null) { yearStr = matcher.group(3); } else if (matcher.group(6) != null) { yearStr = matcher.group(7); } int year = new Integer(yearStr); return (1900 <= year && year < 2100); } @SuppressWarnings("unused") private static boolean isValidSzulIdo(Date input) { if (input == null) { return true; } Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance(); calendar.setTime(input); int year = calendar.get(Calendar.YEAR); return (1900 <= year && year < 2100); } /* * preconditions: * year matches "\\d{4}" * month matches "\\d{2}" * day matches "\\d{2}" */ private static boolean isValidDate(String yearStr, String monthStr, String dayStr) { int year = Integer.valueOf(yearStr).intValue(); int month = Integer.valueOf(monthStr).intValue(); int day = Integer.valueOf(dayStr).intValue(); if (month > 12) { return false; } if (day > MONTH_LENGTHS[month]) { return false; } // check February 29 if (year > 0 && month == 2 && day > 28 && !isLeapYear(year)) { return false; } return true; } private static boolean isLeapYear(int year) { return (year % 4 != 0) ? false : (year % 100 != 0) ? true : (year % 400 != 0) ? false : true; }}

Caiwan asked the obvious question: WHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

The senior developer responsible explained:

Well, for starters, java.util is a big black box, nobody understands how it works. By doing it from scratch, we know exactly how it works. And testing? Testing is easy- wire it up to a UI, feed it inputs, check the outputs, and you know it works. And we know it works, because I copied a lot of this code off StackOverflow. Once it works, it'll always work, if the code doesn't change. That means we don't need unit tests.

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