Case-Insensitive Property Transfer Between Objects

Mapping properties between objects with different naming conventions can be tedious. The following utility enables property copying while ignoring case differences in field names.

public <T> T mapPropertiesIgnoreCase(Object source, Class<T> targetClass) {
    T target = null;
    try {
        if (source != null && !"".equals(source)) {
            target = targetClass.newInstance();
            
            Map<String, Field> fieldMap = new HashMap<>();
            for (Field field : targetClass.getDeclaredFields()) {
                fieldMap.put(field.getName().toLowerCase(), field);
            }
            
            for (Field sourceField : source.getClass().getDeclaredFields()) {
                Field destField = fieldMap.get(sourceField.getName().toLowerCase());
                if (destField != null) {
                    destField.setAccessible(true);
                    sourceField.setAccessible(true);
                    
                    if (destField.getType() == String.class) {
                        destField.set(target, sourceField.get(source));
                    } else if (destField.getType() == LocalDateTime.class) {
                        Object value = sourceField.get(source);
                        if (value != null) {
                            destField.set(target, parseToLocalDateTime(value.toString()));
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return target;
}

Parsing Non-Standard Date Strings to LocalDateTime

The date string format "5/2/2017 4:48:49 PM" requires special handling since it uses 12-hour format with AM/PM indicators.

public static LocalDateTime parseToLocalDateTime(String dateStr) {
    Date parsed = convertStringToDate(dateStr);
    return LocalDateTimeUtils.parseDataToLocalDateTime(parsed);
}

private static Date convertStringToDate(String dateStr) {
    String trimmed = dateStr.trim();
    SimpleDateFormat format;
    
    boolean hasSlash = trimmed.indexOf("/") > -1;
    boolean hasPeriod = trimmed.contains("AM") || trimmed.contains("PM");
    
    if (hasSlash && hasPeriod) {
        format = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy KK:mm:ss a", Locale.ENGLISH);
    } else {
        format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd hh:mm:ss z");
    }
    
    ParsePosition position = new ParsePosition(0);
    return format.parse(trimmed, position);
}

Key Implementation Details

The field mapping process first collects all target class fields into a map using lowercase keys. During the transfer loop, source fields are matched against this map using case-insensitive comparison. String and LocalDateTime types receive special handling to ensure correct data transformation for these common field types.