Click here for Part 1 of this series.
Click here for Part 2 of this series.
Click here for Part 3 of this series.

This one is a little easier on the brain.

From time to time, you will come across a scenario where one structure will need to be copied to another, and there’s no option but to do it “the hard way”, as in the example below. But do you want it to look good?

// Copy temporary record to database object structure
if (copyToRecord) {
  recordObject.Name = tempObject.Name;
  recordObject.Custom_Field_String_13 = tempObject.Custom_Field_String_13
  recordObject.Address_Line_1__c = tempObject.Address_Line_1__c;
  recordObject.Address_Line_2__c = tempObject.Name;
  recordObject.City__c = tempObject.Name;
  recordObject.Country_Code__c = tempObject.Name;
  recordObject.Postcode__c = tempObject.Name;
  recordObject.Contact_1_First_Name__c = tempObject.Name;
  recordObject.Contact_1_Last_Name__c = tempObject.Name;
  recordObject.Contact_2_First_Name__c = tempObject.Name;
  recordObject.Contact_2_Last_Name__c = tempObject.Name;
}

Figure 1, above, shows the raw code as many people would write it. Nothing wrong with that.

// Copy temporary record to database object structure
if (copyToRecord) {
  recordObject.Name                    = tempObject.Name;
  recordObject.Custom_Field_String_13  = tempObject.Custom_Field_String_13
  recordObject.Address_Line_1__c       = tempObject.Address_Line_1__c;
  recordObject.Address_Line_2__c       = tempObject.Address_Line_2__c;
  recordObject.City__c                 = tempObject.City__c;
  recordObject.Country_Code__c         = tempObject.Country_Code__c;
  recordObject.Postcode__c             = tempObject.Postcode__c;
  recordObject.Contact_1_First_Name__c = tempObject.Contact_1_First_Name__c;
  recordObject.Contact_1_Last_Name__c  = tempObject.Contact_1_Last_Name__c;
  recordObject.Contact_2_First_Name__c = tempObject.Contact_2_First_Name__c;
  recordObject.Contact_2_Last_Name__c  = tempObject.Contact_2_Last_Name__c;
}

Figure 2, above, is a “cleaned-up”, column-aligned version of the same code. It took very little effort, but suddenly there’s more clarity.

OK, call me petty, but what do you want your code to say about you?