Copy object properties without using many if statements I have two class:

InputForm.java

public class InputForm {
    private String brandCode;
    private String caution;

    public String getBrandCode() {
        return brandCode;
    }

    public void setBrandCode(String brandCode) {
        this.brandCode = brandCode;
    }

    public String getCaution() {
        return caution;
    }
    public void setCaution(String caution) {
        this.caution = caution;
    }
}


CopyForm.java

public class CopyForm {
    private boolean brandCodeChecked;
    private boolean cautionChecked;

    public boolean isBrandCodeChecked() {
        return brandCodeChecked;
    }

    public void setBrandCodeChecked(boolean brandCodeChecked) {
        this.brandCodeChecked = brandCodeChecked;
    }

    public boolean isCautionChecked() {
        return cautionChecked;
    }

    public void setCautionChecked(boolean cautionChecked) {
        this.cautionChecked = cautionChecked;
    }
}


I want to copy values from an InputForm to another if its corresponding property in CopyForm is true.
This is what I do:

if(copyForm.isBrandCodeChecked()) {
    inputForm.setBrandCode(otherInputForm.getBrandCode());
}
if(copyForm.isCautionChecked()) {
    inputForm.setCaution(otherInputForm.getCaution());
}


The problem is I have many many properties. Writing many if statements seems ugly and bad programming practice.
How to solve it? (I know reflection is not a good choice so I don't think about it)
I think Apache commons BeanUtils might help you there. It uses reflection. Take this into consideration if performance is an issue...

We need 2 Steps:

1st create a method that copies a property if a condition is met

2nd create a copy method that passes all fields to the first method

Here we go...

public class InputForm {
    [...]

    private void copyProperty(InputForm srcForm, String field, boolean condition) {
        if(condition) {
            PropertyUtils.setProperty(this, field, PropertyUtils.getProperty(srcForm, field));
        }
    }

    public void copyFromOtherForm(InputForm srcForm, CopyForm conditions) {
        copyProperty(srcForm, "brandCode", conditions.isBrandCodeChecked());
        copyProperty(srcForm, "caution", conditions.isCautionChecked());
        [...]
    }
}


if you're still not pleased with that you could use reflection to invoke "is"+field+"Checked" on your CopyForm instance and change the calls to:

copyProperty(srcForm, conditions, "field");