How to reduce cyclomatic complexity?

Question

I'm working on a class which sends a RequestDTO to a Web Service. I need to validate the request before it is sent.

The request can be sent from 3 different places and there are different validation rules for each "requesttype", e.g. request1 must have name and phonenumber, request2 must have address, etc)

I have a DTO which contains a long list of fields (name, address, city, phonenumber, etc.) and it is the same DTO sent no matter which type of request it is.

I have created 3 different validation methods and based on the type the appropriate method is called.

In each of these methods I have a long list of if-else's to check for the fields that are necessary for each request type.

private void validateRequest1(Request request) {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    if (null == request) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Request is null");
    }
    if (isFieldEmpty(request.getName())) {  *see below
        sb.append("name,"));
    }
    if (isFieldEmpty(request.getStreet())) {
        sb.append("street,"));
    }
    ...

isFieldEmpty() checks the string for null and isEmpty() and returns a boolean

This gives me a cyclomatic complexity of 28 in one of those methods so my question is.. is it possible to reduce this complexity? - if so, how would I go about doing so?

Ultimately I need to check a lot of fields and I cannot see how this can be done without lots of checks :/

Answer 1

An easy way is to promote the check into a separate method:

private String getAppendString(String value, String appendString) {
    if (value == null || value.isEmpty()) {
        return "";
    }
    return appendString;
}

And then you can use this method instead of the if blocks:

sb.append(getAppendString(request.getStreet(), "street,");

This will reduce complexity from 28 down to 3. Always remember: high complexity counts are an indication that a method is trying to do too much. Complexity can be dealt with by dividing the problem into smaller pieces, like we did here.

Answer 2

Another approach would be to enforce that contract in the Request object itself. If a field is required or can't be null, say so when the Request is created.

Create the Request in such a way that it's 100% valid and ready to go when the constructor exists.

I'd also create that String version in the Request toString() method. It should know how to render itself.

Answer 3

Decorate StringBuilder, add methods named appendIfHasValue.