Different date formats

I'm using Java 7.

```
private Long difference;
public Long timeDifference(String weboutput) {
try {
Calendar calendar = GregorianCalendar.getInstance();
Calendar today = new GregorianCalendar();
Date inputTime;
if (weboutput.length() <= 11) { // for data fetched for current date.
DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm:ss a", Locale.US);
inputTime = formatter.parse(weboutput);
calendar.setTime(inputTime);
int hour = calendar.get(Calendar.HOUR);
int minute = calendar.get(Calendar.MINUTE);
int second = calendar.get(Calendar.SECOND);
today.setTime(new Date());
today.set(Calendar.HOUR, hour);
today.set(Calendar.MINUTE, minute);
today.set(Calendar.SECOND, second);
} else {
if (weboutput.length() <= 15) { // for data for earlier date in same year or month.
DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM dd hh:mm a", Locale.US);
inputTime = formatter.parse(weboutput);
calendar.setTime(inputTime);
int hour = calendar.get(Calendar.HOUR);
int minute = calendar.get(Calendar.MINUTE);
int month = calendar.get(Calendar.MONTH);
int date = calendar.get(Calendar.DATE);
today.setTime(new Date());
today.set(Calendar.HOUR, hour);
today.set(Calendar.MINUTE, minute);
today.set(Calendar.MONTH, month);
today.set(Calendar.DATE, date);
} else { // for data with different year.
DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM dd, yyyy hh:mm:ss a", Locale.US);
inputTime = formatter.parse(weboutput);
calendar.setTime(inputTime);
int hour = calendar.get(Calendar.HOUR);
int minute = calendar.get(Calendar.MINUTE);
int

Do you see what I see? Because I see copy-pasta: Yummy :)

int hour = calendar.get(Calendar.HOUR);
            int minute = calendar.get(Calendar.MINUTE);
            int second = calendar.get(Calendar.SECOND);
            int month = calendar.get(Calendar.MONTH);
            int date = calendar.get(Calendar.DATE);
            int year = calendar.get(Calendar.YEAR);
            today.setTime(new Date());
            today.set(Calendar.HOUR, hour);
            today.set(Calendar.MINUTE, minute);
            today.set(Calendar.SECOND, second);
            today.set(Calendar.YEAR, year);
            today.set(Calendar.MONTH, month);
            today.set(Calendar.DATE, date);

This (or subsections thereof) are copy-pasted for each block in your method.

This screams for extraction into a method:

private static void copyCalendarFields(Calendar source, Calendar destination,
  int... fields) {
    for (int field : fields) {
       destination.set(field, source.get(field));
    }
}

And suddenly things become significantly smaller:

int hour = calendar.get(Calendar.HOUR);
        int minute = calendar.get(Calendar.MINUTE);
        int second = calendar.get(Calendar.SECOND);
        today.setTime(new Date());
        today.set(Calendar.HOUR, hour);
        today.set(Calendar.MINUTE, minute);
        today.set(Calendar.SECOND, second);

is just:

copyCalendarFields(calendar, today, 
    Calendar.HOUR, Calendar.MINUTE, Calendar.SECOND);

and suddenly these long blocks of code are gone and the whole method is a lot more digestable

StackExchange Code Review Q#102658, answer score: 5