I've been spending some time analyzing the Recurrence Rule classes. My
goal is to add localization support so they can be used in a calendar.
There are some problems with the current implementation:
1. Most of the class methods return a long data type that is supposed to
be the millisecond value of a date/time. Some of those methods will
return either zero or -1 to indicate an error or failure. The problem
is, both of those values represent legitimate date/times: zero is Jan 1,
1970, and -1 is Dec 31, 1969. There needs to be a better way to indicate
an error or failure.
2. The exception handling is spotty and used poorly. Methods that throw
exceptions only throw RecurrenceRuleException - which is sometimes used
to "wrap" other exceptions. In my opinion, this is a bad coding practice
- the methods should throw the exception that is most appropriate for
the circumstances.
3. None of the classes take into consideration locale and time zone. All
date/time values are assumed to be in the server's time zone and they
assume a Gregorian calendar.
I'd like to work on these issues, but I wanted to mention them on the
list before committing anything. If you know of any other problems or
limitations with Recurrence Rules, please let me know and I will try to
address them while I'm doing this work.
Comments and suggestions are welcome.
-Adrian
