Code Smell 59 - Basic / Do Functions

sort, doSort, basicSort, doBasicSort, primitiveSort, superBasicPrimitiveSort, who does the real work?

3 April, 2023

Contributors

Maxi Contieri

@mcsee

sort, doSort, basicSort, doBasicSort, primitiveSort, superBasicPrimitiveSort, who does the real work?

TL;DR: Shortcuts for mini wrappers shout for better solutions.

Problems

Readability
Bad Naming
Low Cohesion
Single Responsibility Principle

Solutions

Use good object wrappers
Use dynamic decorators

Sample Code

Wrong

<?

final class Calculator {

    private $cachedResults;

    function computeSomething() {
        if (isset($this->cachedResults)) {
            return $this->cachedResults;
        }
        $this->cachedResults = $this->logAndComputeSomething();
    }

    private function logAndComputeSomething() {
        $this->logProcessStart();
        $result = $this->basicComputeSomething();
        $this->logProcessEnd();
        return $result;
    }

    private function basicComputeSomething() {
        // Do Real work here
    }

}

Right

<?

final class Calculator {
    function computeSomething() {
        // Do Real work here since I am Compute!
    }
}

// Clean and cohesive class, single responsibility

final class CalculatorDecoratorCache {

    private $cachedResults;
    private $decorated;

    function computeSomething() {
        if (isset($this->cachedResults)) {
            return $this->cachedResults;
        }
        $this->cachedResults = $this->decorated->computeSomething();
    }
}

final class CalculatorDecoratorLogger {

    private $decorated;

    function computeSomething() {
        $this->logProcessStart();
        $result = $this->decorated->computeSomething();
        $this->logProcessEnd();
        return $result;
    }
}

Detection

We can instruct our static linters to find wrapping methods if they follow conventions like doXXX(), basicXX() etc.

Conclusion

We came across this kind of methods some time in our developer life, We smelled something was not OK with them. Now is the time to change them!

More Info

https://maximilianocontieri.com/what-exactly-is-a-name-part-ii-rehab

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrapper_function

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decorator_pattern

Credits

Photo by Roger Bradshaw on Unsplash

The primary disadvantage of Wrap Method is that it can lead to poor names. In the previous example, we renamed the pay method dispatchPay() just because we needed a different name for code in the original method.

_ Michael Feathers_

Software Engineering Great Quotes

This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.

How to Find the Stinky Parts of your Code