How I code?

While staring to code I have done a lot of mistakes and that helped me learn new concepts in JavaScript and the DRY principle. Consider the below transformation logic.

// The source data type coming to be transformed
interface ISourceData {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  email: string;
  country: string;
  active: boolean;
  isPro: boolean;
}

// The data that will be loaded to the db
interface ITargetData extends ISourceData {
  modifiedBy: string;
  modifiedOn: string;
  createdBy: string;
  createdOn: string;
  isValid: boolean;
}

During my initial development days I would have written my code like this:

class Transformation {
  public async transform(data: ISourceData[]) {
    const transformedData = data.map((item) => {
      let isValid = false;
      if (item.active === true && item.isPro === true) {
        isValid = true;
      }

      const modifiedBy = "System1";
      const modifiedOn = new Date().toDateString();
      const createdBy = "System1";
      const createdOn = new Date().toDateString();

      return {
        id: item.id,
        name: item.name,
        email: item.email,
        country: item.country,
        active: item.active,
        isPro: item.isPro,
        isValid: isValid,
        modifiedBy: modifiedBy,
        modifiedOn: modifiedOn,
        createdBy: createdBy,
        createdOn: createdOn,
      } as ITargetData;
    });
    // Loading the data to database
    transformedData.forEach(async (item) => await loadToDb(item));
  }
}

This code have 1 major issue and can be written in a much better way.

Issue:
async-await does not work with forEach. So the flow will not be asynchronous.

Now, here is how I write codes now, Which I will improve if needed.

const CREATED_BY_USER = "System1";
class Transformation2 {
  public async transform(data: ISourceData[]) {
    for (const item of data) {
      const transformedData = this.getTransformedData(item);
      await this.loadToDb(transformedData)
    }

  }

  private getTransformedData(sourceData: ISourceData): ITargetData {
    return {
      ...sourceData,
      ...this.getIsValid(sourceData.active, sourceData.isPro),
      ...this.generateDefaults(),
    } as ITargetData;
  }

  private getIsValid(active: boolean, isPro: boolean) {
    return { isValid: active && isPro };
  }

  private generateDefaults() {
    const transformationDate: string = new Date().toISOString();
    return {
      modifiedBy: CREATED_BY_USER,
      modifiedOn: transformationDate,
      createdBy: CREATED_BY_USER,
      createdOn: transformationDate,
    };
  }

  private async loadToDb(data: ITargetData): Promise<void>{
    // logic to load the data to database
  }
}

You can see the difference clearly,

• Multiple private methods that have specific tasks.
• CREATED_BY_USER const variable as it won't change.
• transformationData is now an ISO string instead of date & day earlier : "Wed Aug 31 2022" now: "2022-08-31T09:30:16.579Z"
• getIsValid method working specifically to get me the isValid key data.
• De-structuring to get the data into the format needed.
• for-of loop that works perfectly with async-await.

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Rahul RajFollow

I am a developer who is trying to improve myself day by day.