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

1. Use good object wrappers

2. 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.

Tags

• Declarativiness

Conclusion

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

More info

Credits

Photo by Roger Bradshaw on Unsplash

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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

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This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.