Question

I have a class which analyzes a string and if the string is not null or an empty string, it creates a new String or new Date using the object depending on the type of subclass. If the string is null or empty it returns an empty string. Currently I call this class converter however I feel this name is misleading, is there a better name anyone can think of for what this class is doing? I want something intuitive that will make my code more readable. Thanks.

public abstract class Converter {
    Object returnObject;

    public Converter() {

    }

    public Object convert(String value)
    {
        if(!this.isEmpty(value))
        {
            this.setReturnObject(value);    
        }else
        {
            this.returnObject = "";
        }
        return this.getReturnObject();
    }

    protected boolean isEmpty(String value)
    {
        return (value != null && value.equalsIgnoreCase(""));
    }

    protected abstract void setReturnObject(String value);

    protected Object getReturnObject(){
        return this.returnObject;
    }
}

public class NumberConverter extends Converter {
    public NumberConverter() {
    }

    protected void setReturnObject(String value) {
        this.returnObject = new Number(Integer.parseInt(value));
    }
}

Answer 1

You can use either EntityMapper or EntityTransformer.