Photo by Levi Jones on Unsplash
Code Smell 192 - Optional Attributes
You need to model something optional. Have you tried collections?
TL;DR: Collections are fantastic. And Polymorphic.
Problems
- Null
- If Pollution
Solutions
- Change the optional attribute to a collection.
Context
If you need to model something that might be missing, some fancy languages will provide optional, nullable, and many other wrong solutions dealing with The Billion Dollar Mistake.
Empty collections and non-empty collections are polymorphic.
Sample Code
Wrong
class Person {
constructor(name, email) {
this.name = name;
this.email = email;
}
email() {
return this.email;
// might be null
}
}
// We cannot use safely person.email()
// We need to check for null explicitly
Right
class Person {
constructor(name, emails) {
this.name = name;
this.emails = emails;
}
emails() {
return this.emails;
}
// We can mutate the emails since they are not essential
addEmail(email) {
this.emails.push(email);
}
removeEmail(email) {
const index = this.emails.indexOf(email);
if (index !== -1) {
this.emails.splice(index, 1);
}
}
}
// we can iterate the person.emails()
// in a loop without checking for null
Detection
[X] Semi-Automatic
You can detect nullable attributes and change them when necessary.
Tags
- Null
Conclusion
This is a generalization of the null object pattern.
Relations
More Info
Disclaimer
Code Smells are just my opinion.
Credits
Photo by Levi Jones on Unsplash
To iterate is human, to recurse divine
Peter Deutsch
This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.