Code Smell 04 - String Abusers

Too many parsing, exploding, regex, strcomp, strpos and string manipulation functions.

TL;DR: Use real abstractions and real objects instead of string accidental manipulation.

Problems

• Complexity
• Readability
• Maintainability
• Lack of Abstractions

Solutions

1) Work with objects instead.

2) Replace strings with data structures dealing with object relations.

3) Go back to Perl :)

4) Find Bijection problems between real objects and the strings.

Examples

-Serializers

-Parsers

Sample Code

Wrong

<?

$schoolDescription = 'College of Springfield';

preg_match('/[^ ]*$/', $schoolDescription, $results);
$location = $results[0]; // $location = 'Springfield'.

$school = preg_split('/[\s,]+/', $schoolDescription, 3)[0]; //'College'

Right

<?

class School {

    private $name;
    private $location;

    function description() {
        return $this->name . ' of ' . $this->location->name;
    }

}

Detection

Automated detection is not easy. If code uses too many string functions, it can trigger a warning.

Relations

• Primitive Obsession

More info

Tags

• Mapping

Conclusion

Don't abuse strings. Favor real objects. Find absent protocol to distinguish them from strings.

Credits

Photo by Nathaniel Shuman on Unsplash

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This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.

How to Find the Stinky parts of your Code

Maxi Contieri ・ May 21 '21 ・ 4 min read

#codenewbie #tutorial #codequality #beginners

Last update: 2021/06/03