How do you handle huge if-conditions?

Question

It\'s something that\'s bugged me in every language I\'ve used, I have an if statement but the conditional part has so many checks that I have to split it over multiple lines, u

Answer 1

Try looking at Functors and Predicates. The Apache Commons project has a great set of objects to allow you to encapsulate conditional logic into objects. Example of their use is available on O'reilly here. Excerpt of code example:

import org.apache.commons.collections.ClosureUtils;
import org.apache.commons.collections.CollectionUtils;
import org.apache.commons.collections.functors.NOPClosure;

Map predicateMap = new HashMap();

predicateMap.put( isHonorRoll, addToHonorRoll );
predicateMap.put( isProblem, flagForAttention );
predicateMap.put( null, ClosureUtils.nopClosure() );

Closure processStudents = 
    ClosureUtils.switchClosure( predicateMap );

CollectionUtils.forAllDo( allStudents, processStudents );

Now the details of all those isHonorRoll predicates and the closures used to evaluate them:

import org.apache.commons.collections.Closure;
import org.apache.commons.collections.Predicate;

// Anonymous Predicate that decides if a student 
// has made the honor roll.
Predicate isHonorRoll = new Predicate() {
  public boolean evaluate(Object object) {
    Student s = (Student) object;

    return( ( s.getGrade().equals( "A" ) ) ||
            ( s.getGrade().equals( "B" ) && 
              s.getAttendance() == PERFECT ) );
  }
};

// Anonymous Predicate that decides if a student
// has a problem.
Predicate isProblem = new Predicate() {
  public boolean evaluate(Object object) {
    Student s = (Student) object;

    return ( ( s.getGrade().equals( "D" ) || 
               s.getGrade().equals( "F" ) ) ||
             s.getStatus() == SUSPENDED );
  }
};

// Anonymous Closure that adds a student to the 
// honor roll
Closure addToHonorRoll = new Closure() {
  public void execute(Object object) {
    Student s = (Student) object;

    // Add an award to student record
    s.addAward( "honor roll", 2005 );
    Database.saveStudent( s );
  }
};

// Anonymous Closure flags a student for attention
Closure flagForAttention = new Closure() {
  public void execute(Object object) {
    Student s = (Student) object;

    // Flag student for special attention
    s.addNote( "talk to student", 2005 );
    s.addNote( "meeting with parents", 2005 );
    Database.saveStudent( s );
  }
};