KE
  • dotNet Web 3.0
  • Engineering Management
    • Process Planning (SDLC)
      • Software development process
      • Basics of SDLC models
      • Scrum
      • Kanban
      • Scrum vs Kanban: applicability
      • Scrumban
    • Estimation
      • Scope Concept
      • Estimates, Targets, and Commitments
      • Overestimate vs Underestimate
      • Decomposition and Recomposition
      • Analogy-based estimations
      • Estimating in Agile
  • Requirements
    • Software Requirements Engineering
      • Requirement definition
      • Levels of Requirements
      • Most common requirements risks
      • Characteristics of Excellent Requirements
      • Benefits from a High-Quality Requirements Process
      • Root Causes of Project Success and Failure
  • Design
    • OOD
      • Abstraction
      • Encapsulation
      • Inheritance vs Aggregation
      • Modularity
      • Polymorphism
      • Abstraction Qualities (cohesion, coupling, etc)
      • Types vs. Classes
      • Separation of concerns principle
      • SOLID
      • Design Patterns
        • Structural patterns
        • Creational patterns
        • Behavioral patterns
      • Most often used design patterns
      • Software Architecture Patterns (structure, pros & cons)
      • Inversion of Control Containers and the Dependency Injection pattern
      • Domain-Driven Design patterns
      • Anti-patterns
    • DB Design
      • Relational Terminology: Entities
      • Relational terminology: Attributes
      • Relational terminology: Records (Tuples)
      • Relationships (One-to-One, One-to-Many)
      • Understanding ER notation
      • Understanding normalization concept
      • Data Integrity
    • Modeling
      • UML: Basic Diagram Types
      • UML: Use Case Diagram (Essentials)
      • UML: Class Diagram (Essentials)
      • Entity Relationship Diagrams
      • Data Flow Diagrams
    • Security
      • Information security concepts
      • Access Control Lists (ACLs)
      • Access Control Models
      • .NET Cryptography Model
      • ASP.NET Identity
      • OWASP Top 10
      • Cross-Site Request Forgery (XSRF)
      • Protecting against cross-site scripting attacks (XSS)
      • Protecting against buffer overrun attacks
      • Protecting against SQL-injection attacks
      • CSRF/XSRF protection
    • Algorithms
      • Algorithms complexity (understanding, big O notation, complexity of common algorithms)
      • Array sorting methods (bubble sort, quick sort, merge sort)
      • Tree structure (construction, traversal)
      • Binary search algorithm
      • Hash table (creating, collisions)
      • Stack, queue, linked list (construction, understanding, usage)
  • Construction Core
    • Programming language
      • Declare namespaces, classes, interfaces, static and instance class members
      • Types casting
      • Value and reference types. Class vs Struct usage.
      • Properties and automatic properties
      • Structured Exception Handling, Exception filters
      • Collections and Generics
      • Dictionaries. Comparison of Dictionaries
      • Building enumerable types
      • Building cloneable objects
      • Building comparable types
      • Nullable types
      • Delegates, events and lambdas
      • Indexers and operator overloading
      • Anonymous types
      • Extension methods. Practices.
      • Custom Type Conversions (implicit/explicit keywords)
      • Strings and StringBuilder. String concatenation practices. String Interpolation
      • Serialization
      • System.IO namespace
      • LINQ to Objects
      • General Coding conventions for C#
      • Static Using Statement
      • Type Reflection
      • Custom attributes
      • Dispose and Finalizable patterns
      • Garbage collection
      • .Net Diagnostics
      • Implementing logging
      • Exception handling guidelines
      • Regular Expressions
      • Span<T> struct
      • C# - What's new?
      • .NET Standard overview
    • Concurrency
      • Understand differences between Concurrency vs Multi-threading vs Asynchronous
      • Concurrency: An Overview
      • Async basics
      • Task Parallelism
      • Basic Synchronization in C#
      • Deadlock problem
      • QueueBackgroundWorkItem or IHostedService for .NET Core
      • How to run Background Tasks in ASP.NET
    • Refactoring
      • Refactoring Concept (what/when/why)
      • Smells Catalog and possible re-factorings
      • Moving Features Between Objects (basic)
      • Organizing Data (basic)
      • Composing Methods (basic)
      • Simplifying Conditional Expressions (basic)
      • Making Method Calls Simpler
      • Dealing with Generalization
    • Product deploying, software installation
      • Create, configure, and publish a web package (.NET Web Profile)
      • Publishing Web Services
      • Manage packages by using NuGet, NPM and Bower
    • Networking
      • Understanding networks: layers and protocols
      • Basic understanding of TCP/IP model and protocols
      • Defining internet, intranet and VPN
      • Basics of Firewalls and DMZ
      • Application layer protocols basics (HTTP, FTP, Telnet)
      • Understanding HTTP and WWW
      • Basic troubleshooting tools (ICMP, ping, traceroute)
      • Client/Server model
      • Sockets, IP and port addressing
      • Using proxy server
      • File transfer services: FTP, TFTP
      • Name resolution services: DNS, whois
      • Remote access services: Telnet, SSH, rdesktop, VNC
      • The basic difference between HTTP and HTTPS protocols
  • Construction Web
    • Web server applications
      • ASP.NET Core
        • Application startup
        • Middleware
        • Working with Static Files
        • Routing
        • Error Handling
        • Globalization and localization
        • Configuration
        • Logging
        • File Providers
        • Dependency Injection
        • Working with Multiple Environments
        • Hosting
        • Managing Application State
        • Request Features
      • ASP.NET Core MVC
        • MVC basics (Model, View, Controller, DI)
        • Model binding and validation
        • View (Razor compilation, Layout, Tag Helpers, Partial Views, DI, View components)
        • Controllers (Route to actions, File uploads)
      • Security and Identity (concepts understanding)
        • Authentication
        • Using identity
        • Authorization with roles
      • Bundle and Minify assets
      • Develop ASP.NET Core MVC apps
      • Advanced topics for ASP.NET Core MVC
        • Application model
        • Filters
        • Areas
        • Application Parts
        • Custom Model Building
        • IActionConstraint
      • Host and deploy ASP.NET Core
      • Migrate from ASP.NET to ASP.NET Core
      • Troubleshoot ASP.NET Core projects
      • Open Web Interface for .NET (OWIN)
      • Web server implementations in ASP.NET Core
    • Web Services
      • REST
      • ASP.NET Web API
        • Routing
        • Configuration
        • Basic error handling
      • Web API-based services
      • Web API Security
      • Token based security
      • SingalR
      • Serialization Frameworks
      • Implement caching
      • gRPC on ASP.NET Core
      • API versioning
      • API documentation
    • Microservices and Cloud
      • Microservices architecture
      • Dockerize a .NET Core application
      • Development workflow for Docker apps
    • JavaScript, HTML, CSS
      • JavaScript: Variables
      • JavaScript: Data types and types conversion
      • JavaScript: Operators
      • JavaScript: Control and Loop constructions
      • JavaScript: Functions, Execution Context and Variables scopes
      • JavaScript: Arrays
      • JavaScript: JS in WebBrowser and basic DOM manipulations
      • HTML: Basic elements
      • CSS: Simple Style rules
      • CSS: selectors
      • Box model
      • HTML: Standards and Browser compatibility
      • HTML: Page Layouts with divs
      • HTML: Frames
      • CSS: Elements positioning and layering
      • CSS: Tables properties
      • CSS: Flexbox
      • Different storage
      • JavaScript: Event Understanding (propagation, capturing, attach/detach)
      • JavaScript: Closure
      • AJAX/JSON
      • Ecma script 6: OOP
      • Promise
      • Strict mode of javascript
    • JavaScript Frameworks
      • Selecting elements
      • Operating on collection
      • Manipulating with elements, working with properties, attributes and data
      • Events
      • animation and effects
      • utilities and Ajax
      • SPA (SINGLE PAGE APPLICATIONS)
      • EcmaScript 6
      • UI frameworks basics:
      • NPM basics:
      • React basics
  • Construction DB
    • SQL
      • Tables, relationships, keys, constraints understanding
      • DDL, DML, DCL understanding
      • SQL data types
      • SQL operators, functions
      • Data manipulation (insert, update, delete)
      • Retrieving data (simple select statement)
      • Joins understanding
      • Creating, modifying, removing database objects
      • Aggregations (ORDER BY, GROUP BY, HAVING, SUM, COUNT, AVG, etc)
      • Combining the results of multiple queries (UNION, EXCEPT, INTERSECT, MINUS, subqueries)
      • Sessions, transactions, locks
      • Isolation levels understanding
      • Implementing stored procedures, user-defined functions, triggers
      • Cursors
    • Data Access Layer
      • Manage connection strings and objects
      • Working with data providers
      • Connect to a data source by using a generic data access interface
      • Handle and diagnose database connection exceptions
      • Manage exceptions when selecting, modifying data
      • Build command objects and query data from data sources
      • Retrieve data source by using the DataReader
      • Manage data by using the DataAdapter and TableAdapter
      • Updating data
      • Entity Framework
        • Query data sources by using EF
        • Code First to existing DB
        • Entity Data Modeling Fundamentals
        • Querying Data
        • Data modification
  • Verification
    • Code Quality
      • MSDN: Guidelines for Names
      • SDO Best Practices Catalog - Coding Standards
      • SDO Best Practices Catalog - Code Review Process
      • SDO Best Practices Catalog - Automatic Code Inspection
      • Automated coding standards enforcement (StyleCop, Resharper)
      • Code Reviews and Toolset
      • Use Work Items (TODO, BUG etc.)
      • Preemptive Error Detection
      • Desirable characteristics of a design (minimal complexity, ease of maintenance, minimal connectednes
      • Creating high quality classes
      • Creating high quality methods
      • Guidelines for initializing variables
      • Exceptions and error handling techniques
      • Best practices of working with data types
      • Code commenting practices
    • Automated Testing (principles, patterns, and practices)
      • Software testing basic concepts
      • Software testing concept
      • Test Case
      • Test Suite
      • Test Plan
      • Testing Levels
      • Naming standards for unit tests
      • Types of test doubles (Stub, Mock, Spy, Fake, Dummy)
      • Basic coverage criteria
      • Testing concepts (Unit vs Functional vs Integration)
      • Goals of Unit Testing, What Makes a Test Valuable?
      • Styles of Unit Testing (Output / State / Collaboration)
      • Good unit test properties
      • F.I.R.S.T Principles of unit testing
      • Test Pyramid concept
      • Testing Pyramid, Agile Testing Pyramid, Diamond
      • Breaking the dependency, Interaction testing
      • Strategies for isolating the database in tests
      • Test smells and how to avoid
      • Test Organization patterns
      • Fixture setup patterns
      • Test double patterns
      • Feature-driven development (FDD)
      • Behavior-driven development (BDD)
      • Test-driven development (TDD)
      • Acceptance testing, Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD)
      • Continuous testing
    • Automated Testing (Frameworks, Tools, Libraries)
      • .NET unit test frameworks overview
      • .NET Mocking Frameworks, a comparison
      • xUnit
        • Primary test framework attributes
        • Asserts
        • Exception Handling in Unit Tests
        • Skipping Tests
        • Initialization and Cleanup (Assembly, Class, Test)
        • Data-driven Tests
      • NSubstitute
        • Mocking Method Calls (Using Mock Object, Return Values, Argument Matching)
        • Behavior Verification (Method Was/Not Called, a Specific Number of Times, Getter/Setter Was Called)
        • Throwing exceptions
        • Raising Events from Mock Objects
        • Returning Different Results for Sequential Calls
      • AutoFixture
      • EF Core InMemory test
      • Integration tests in ASP.NET Core
      • Isolating database data in integration tests
      • Test ASP.NET Core MVC apps
  • Configuration Management
    • Product builds and Continuous Integration
      • Automated build concept
      • Dotnet cli
      • CI/CD Basic concepts
    • Managing Versions
      • Fundamental concepts: revisions, working copy, repository, branch, baseline, trunk
      • Versioning Models
      • Distributed Version Control basics
      • Distributed systems advantages and weak sides
      • VCS Management life-cycle on (one of) major tools (clone, commit, update, revert, merge, resolve, et
      • Branching/Merging strategies
      • Blaming (annotate)
      • Revision graph/log actions (Git)
      • Integrating with Issue Tracking Systems
      • Source control Best Practices
Powered by GitBook
On this page
  • Decompose Conditional Expression
  • Consolidate Conditional Expression
  • Consolidate Duplicate Conditional Fragments
  • Remove Control Flag
  • Mechanics
  • Replace Conditional with Polymorphism
  1. Construction Core
  2. Refactoring

Simplifying Conditional Expressions (basic)

Decompose Conditional Expression

One of the most common sources of complexity in a program is complex conditional logic. As I write code to do various things depending on various conditions, I can quickly end up with a pretty long function. Length of a function is in itself a factor that makes it harder to read, but conditions increase the difficulty. The problem usually lies in the fact that the code, both in the condition checks and in the actions, tells me what happens but can easily obscure why it happens.

As with any large block of code, I can make my intention clearer by decomposing it and replacing each chunk of code with a function call named after the intention of that chunk. With conditions, I particularly like doing this for the conditional part and each of the alternatives. This way, I highlight the condition and make it clear what I’m branching on. I also highlight the reason for the branching.

This is really just a particular case of applying Extract Function to my code, but I like to highlight this case as one where I’ve often found a remarkably good value for the exercise.

Mechanics

  • Apply Extract Function on the condition and each leg of the conditional

Consolidate Conditional Expression

Sometimes, I run into a series of conditional checks where each check is different yet the resulting action is the same. When I see this, I use and and or operators to consolidate them into a single conditional check with a single result. Consolidating the conditional code is important for two reasons. First, it makes it clearer by showing that I’m really making a single check that combines other checks.

The sequence has the same effect, but it looks like I’m carrying out a sequence of separate checks that just happen to be close together. The second reason I like to do this is that it often sets me up for Extract Function (106). Extracting a condition is one of the most useful things I can do to clarify my code. It replaces a statement of what I’m doing with why I’m doing it.

Mechanics

  • Ensure that none of the conditionals have any side effects

  • Take two of the conditional statements and combine their conditions using a logical operator

  • Test

  • Repeat combining conditionals until they are all in a single condition

  • Consider using Extract Function (106) on the resulting condition

Consolidate Duplicate Conditional Fragments

Code is easier to understand when things that are related to each other appear together. If several lines of code access the same data structure, it’s best for them to be together rather than intermingled with code accessing other data structures. At its simplest, I use Slide Statements to keep such code together. A very common case of this is declaring and using variables. Some people like to declare all their variables at the top of a function. I prefer to declare the variable just before I first use it.

Usually, I move related code together as a preparatory step for another refactoring, often an Extract Function. Putting related code into a clearly separated function is a better separation than just moving a set of lines together, but I can’t do the Extract Function unless the code is together in the first place.

Mechanics

  • Identify the target position to move the fragment to. Examine statements between source and target to see if there is interference for the candidate fragment. Abandon action if there is any interference

  • Cut the fragment from the source and paste into the target position

  • Test

Remove Control Flag

You have a variable that is acting as a control flag for a series of boolean expressions. Use a break or return instead

Mechanics

  • Find the value of the control flag that gets you out of the logic statement.

  • Replace assignments of the break-out value with a break or continue statement.

  • Compile and test after each replacement.

Another approach, also usable in languages without break and continue, is as follows:

  • Extract the logic into a method.

  • Find the value of the control flag that gets you out of the logic statement.

  • Replace assignments of the break-out value with a return.

  • Compile and test after each replacement.

Even in languages with a break or continue, I usually prefer use of an extraction and of a return. The return clearly signals that no more code in the method is executed. If you have that kind of code, you often need to extract that piece anyway.

Keep an eye on whether the control flag also indicates result information. If it does, you still need the control flag if you use the break, or you can return the value if you have extracted a method.

Replace Conditional with Polymorphism

A common case for this is where I can form a set of types, each handling the conditional logic differently. I might notice that books, music, and food vary in how they are handled because of their type. This is made most obvious when there are several functions that have a switch statement on a type code. In that case, I remove the duplication of the common switch logic by creating classes for each case and using polymorphism to bring out the typespecific behavior.

Polymorphism is one of the key features of objectoriented programming—and, like any useful feature, it’s prone to overuse. I’ve come across people who argue that all examples of conditional logic should be replaced with polymorphism. I don’t agree with that view. Most of my conditional logic uses basic conditional statements—if/else and switch/case. But when I see complex conditional logic that can be improved as discussed above, I find polymorphism a powerful tool.

Mechanics

  • If classes do not exist for polymorphic behavior, create them together with a factory function to return the correct instance.

  • Use the factory function in calling code.

  • Move the conditional function to the superclass.

  • If the conditional logic is not a selfcontained function, use Extract Function to make it so.

  • Pick one of the subclasses. Create a subclass method that overrides the conditional statement method. Copy the body of that leg of the conditional statement into the subclass method and adjust it to fit.

  • Repeat for each leg of the conditional.

  • Leave a default case for the superclass method. Or, if superclass should be abstract, declare that method as abstract or throw an error to show it should be the responsibility of a subclass.

PreviousComposing Methods (basic)NextMaking Method Calls Simpler

Last updated 5 years ago