Contacts – Part 3

Goal: Quality control the Contact class.

Unchecked exceptions

An unchecked exception crashes the app as a result of badly written code.

You should throw an:

• IllegalArgumentException when the caller passes faulty arguments into a method/constructor.

• IllegalStateException when the caller invokes a method at a bad time (object not in a valid state).

Throwing an unchecked exception forces the caller to improve their code.

Task 1 – Contact Constructor

In the Contact constructor, throw an IllegalArgumentException if the:

• name is null OR blank.

• phoneNumber is null OR blank.

• phoneNumber length is less than 5.

Should the constructor throw an IllegalArgumentException if birthDate is null OR blank?

• Not necessary. The underlying parse() method already throws a checked exception if the birthDate is not parseable.

Task 2 – setName

Inside setName, throw an IllegalArgumentException if the caller passes a name that is blank or null.

Task 3 – setPhoneNumber

Inside setPhoneNumber, throw an IllegalArgumentException if:

• the caller passes a phoneNumber that is blank or null.

• the phoneNumber is less than 5 characters.

Task 4 – setBirthDate

• Should we throw an IllegalArgumentException if birthDate is null OR blank?

  • Not necessary. The setter already throws an exception if the birthDate is not parseable. Throwing another one is redundant.

That's all!

You added checkpoints to the Contact class. Each checkpoint forbids the caller from misusing the methods/constructors.