Question

I have a method that does several tasks. It is part of the business logic of the application, but it is poorly readable because of the many if-then and try-catch blocks and the many log calls.

public class MyClass {     

boolean createReport, sendReport, warnIfErrors;

public void archiveAll() {

    if (createReport) {
      //... ...
    }

    if (sendReport) {
      //... ...
    }

    if (warnIfErrors) {
      //... ...
    }

} 

The idea is to move the tasks into ad hoc methods and have an “archiveAll” method that may be understood at a glance:

public void archiveAll() {

    doCreateReport();

    doSendReport();

    doWarnIfErrors();

} 

But as doing this, two problems arise:

1. if all methods use a local variable, I’ll move it as a class field, but this is not good design
2. I want to move the test if (createReport) into the method doCreateReport too, because part of the complexity derives from the tests that are done. This makes the sub methods poorly cohesive though.

Answer 1

1. Instead of making variables class fields, just parameterize the function and pass the values around. This has another big advantage that your code will now become more unit-testable. I always promote to have each method to be as independent as possible as it helps in UT.
2. If you had the name changed to checkAndCreateReport then, will you still think that way:)