[LANG-884] Simplify FastDateFormat; eliminate boxing

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 3.1
• Fix Version/s: 3.2
• Component/s: lang.time.*
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Sebb
• Created: 12/Apr/13 19:35
• Updated: 15/Oct/13 02:33
• Resolved: 30/Apr/13 11:59

Description

FastDateFormat calls the method FormatCache.getDateTimeInstance(Integer, Integer, ...) several times. There are some issues with this:

• the two Integer parameters could be mixed up
• the int parameters have to be boxed into Integers
• the FastDateFormat class has to 'know' that FormatCache uses null for no date/no time.

The FormatCache class could be extended to add getDate, getTime and getDateTime methods with int parameters, and the calling sequences would them be a lot more obvious. Instead of:

public static FastDateFormat getDateInstance(final int style) {
    return cache.getDateTimeInstance(style, null, null, null);
}

one could write:

public static FastDateFormat getDateInstance(final int style) {
    return cache.getDateInstance(style, null, null);
}

The FormatCache class would then be responsible for boxing the date and time int values as necessary.

As well as simplifying the FastDateFormat code, it would also allow the FormatCache code to be reworked. Only it would know that null is currently used for a missing date or time; and it could be changed to use a different representation if that was better.