TL;DR: Create Small objects and restrict your domain.

Problems

• Bijection Fault

• Fail fast principle violation

• Repeated Code validation

Solutions

1. Create small objects and validate the domain.

Context

This is a primitive obsession smell.

EmailAddresses are a subset of string.

Valid Ages are a subset of Real.

Ports are a subset of Integers.

A wordle word is a subset of String.

Sample Code

Wrong

destination = "destination@example.com"

destination = "destination.example.com"
// No error thrown

Right

public class EmailAddress {
    public String emailAddress;

    public EmailAddress(String address) {
        string expressions = @"^\w+([-+.']\w+)*@\w+([-.]\w+)*\.\w+([-.]\w+)*$";
        if (!Regex.IsMatch(email, expressions) {
          throw new Exception('Invalid address');
        }
        this.emailAddress = address;
    }
}

destination = new EmailAddress("destination@example.com");

Not to be confused with the anemic Java version

Detection

[X] Manual

This is a semantic smell.

Tags

• Primitive Obsession

Conclusion

We need to be loyal to the bijection of the real world.

Subsets are very important for early validations and fail fast principle.

Relations

More Info

Disclaimer

Code Smells are just my opinion.

Credits

Photo by Mona Eendra on Unsplash

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Every craftsman starts his or her journey with a basic set of good-quality tools.

Andrew Hunt

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This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.