i'm currently working on a big projekt and i loose many time searching the right thing in the code. i need to get e.g. a method which makes someting special. so i scroll the whole code.
are there any common and effective methods to struct a file of code? e.g.
1. all global variables
2. constructor etc.
3. all methods
4. all event handlers
do you know common methods to do this??
It's more usual to break large projects into several source files, with logically related functionality. This helps with speeding up compilation and reducing coupling in your design as well as helping you navigate the code.
An example might be to have separate files for
UI functionality
helper classes (such as geometric/maths stuff)
file I/O
core functionality that connects the rest together
Design is a large topic, the book Code Complete by Steve McConnell might be a good starting point for you.
You shouldnt use global variables :)
Try spreading things out over different classes and files. Maks sure each class has only one purpose, instead of 1 class that manages a whole lot of different tasks.
That sounds like a sensible enough structure to me, what would really benefit you though is learning to use the tools you have available — whatever editor you're using it will have a search function, you can use that to quickly find what you're looking for.
Some editors will also include bookmarks too, and most offer a way to move back and forward through recent positions in the file.
Seen this sort of things started, never seen it kept on under the pressure to turn out code though.
Basically my rule of thumb is, if I feel the need to do this, break the code file up.
I am new to Ruby, and I am currently working with an API which is unfamiliar to me. In order to use code completion, which helps me learn, I installed RadRails in Eclipse. However, I am having trouble with Content Assist: specifically, the Content Assist does not reveal the methods for objects in the API.
For example, one of my objects, ins, represents a loaded XBRL instance document. If I run ins.methods, the list contains all of the methods I want, including those in the API (such as functions that allow me to access items in the instance):
...
item
item_all
item_all_groupby_vocab
item_all_map
item_by_vocab
item_ctx_filter
...
etc.
However, if I just type ins. with Content Assist enabled, it only shows options like:
dclone
gem
gem_original_require
JSON
Pathname(path)
...
etc.
which appear to be system options. As a result, the Content Assist exposes exactly zero of the methods I actually want to use. If I know the methods ahead of time and start typing them, I can get Content Assist to give them to me, eventually, by pressing Ctrl+Space. However, that requires me to know what I want ahead of time; since I am using this to explore the API, that doesn't work for me.
Does anyone know how to get RadRails/Eclipse to show me the correct methods?
Regards,
Matt
This is a general problem inherent to dynamic languages and IDEs/editors. The IDE has to guess at the type of the variable that the code assist is being invoked upon, and from that generate the list of applicable methods.
IRB has type information at runtime, so it knows what methods apply. The IDE is trying to guess the type by analyzing your code statically (not running it).
Having said that, the IDE should often be able to guess correctly. Providing the larger context of the snippet of code that this is being invoked on would be helpful to look into whether or not we could provide helpful content assist on this object. You may want to file a ticket with the version number, and the sample code here: http://aptana.com/r/apbugs
I'm looking into writing an addin (or package, if necessary) for Visual Studio 2005 that needs watch window type functionality -- evaluation of expressions and examination of the types. The automation facilities provide
Debugger::GetExpression, which is useful enough, but the information
provided is a bit crude.
From looking through the docs, it sounds like an
IDebugExpressionContext2 would be more useful. With one of these it
looks as if I can get more information from an expression -- detailed
information about the type and any members and so on and so forth, without having everything come through as strings.
I can't find any way of actually getting a IDebugExpressionContext2,
though! IDebugProgramProvider2 sort of looks relevant, in that I
could start with IDebugProgramProvider2::GetProviderProcessData and
then slowly drill down until reaching something that can supply my
expression context -- but I'll need to supply a port to this, and it's
not clear how to retrieve the port corresponding to the current debug
session. (Even if I tried every port, it's not obvious how to tell
which port is the right one...)
I'm becoming suspicious that this simply isn't a supported use case, but with any luck I've simply missed something crashingly obvious.
Can anybody help?
By using IDebugExpressionContext you'll ultamitely end up getting ahold of an instance of IDebugProperty. This interface is implemented by the Expression Evaluator service. This is, typically, a language specific service. It's designed to abstract out the language specific details of evaluating an expression. It understands much higher level commands like "Evaluate", and inspection.
I don't think you're going to get what you're looking for though because you can't get ahold of any kind of type object this way. Nearly all of the inspection methods return their results in String form. For example you won't get the type Int32 but instead the string "int". This makes type inspection next to impossible.
I don't believe what you're trying is a supported case. The type system being evaluated doesn't exist in the current process. It exists in the debuggee process and is fairly difficult to get access to.
There's a hack you could do to get more information about the type of a variable you've evaluated using Debugger::GetExpression method.
You could evaluate "AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies()" to get all the assemblies loaded into the debugee, and cache them in your add-in. You may also need to listen for new assemblies being loaded onto the AppDomain.
Then, run the following:
Expression myExpression = Debugger.GetExpression(...);
Expression typeRefExpression = Debugger.GetExpression("typeof(" + myExpression.Type + ").FullName"
once you have the TypeFullName, you can search inside your assemblies cache for a matching System.Type, and once you have that, you can dig into it all you want using the standart Reflection API.
Note that this will only work in C#, because of its "typeof" keyword. You'll have to use a different keyword for VB.Net, for example.
When adding internationalisation capabilities to an Oracle web application (build on mod_plsql), I'd like to interpret the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE parameter and use it to set various NLS_* settings in the Oracle session.
For example:
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE=de
alter session set nls_territory=germany;
alter session set nls_lang=...
However, you could get something more complicated I suppose...
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE=en-us,en;q=0.5
How have folks tackled this sort of thing before?
EDIT - following on from Curt's detailed answer below
Thanks for the clear and detailed reply Curt. I didn't really make myself clear though, as I was really asking if there were any existing Oracle widgets that handled this.
I'm already down the road of manually parsing the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE variable and - as Curt indicated in his answer - there are a few subtle areas of complexity. It feels like something that must have been done many times before. As I wrote more and more code I had that sinking "I'm reinventing the wheel" feeling. :)
There must be an existing Oracle approach for this - probably something in iAS??
EDIT - stumbled across the answer
While looking for something else, I stumbled across the UTL_I18N package, which does exactly wham I'm after:
Is there an easy way to convert HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE to Oracle NLS_LANG settings?
Sure, and it's not too tough, if you break up the problem properly and don't get to ambitious at first.
You need, essentially, two functions: one to parse the HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE and produce a language code, and one to take that and generate the appropriate set commands.
The former can get pretty sophisticated; if you're given only 'en', you probably want to generate 'en-us', you need to deal with chosing one of multiple choices when nothing matches perfectly, you need to deal with malformed header values, and so on. Don't try to tackle this all at once: just do something very simple at first, and extend it later.
The same more or less goes for the other half of it, generating the set commands, but this is pretty simple in and of itself anyway; it's really just a lookup function, though it may get a bit more sophisticated depending on what is provided to it.
What will really make or break your programming experience on something like this is your unit tests. This is an ideal problem for unit testing and test-driven development. Unit tests will make sure that when you change things, old functionality keeps working, and make it easier to add new functionality and fix bugs, because you just add another test and you have that to guide you from that point on. (You'll also find it easier to do a complete rewrite of one of the functions if you find out you've gone terribly wrong at some point, because you can easily confirm that the new version isn't breaking anything.)
How you do unit testing in your environment is probably a bit beyond the scope of this question, but let me add a few hints. First, if there's a unit test framework ("pl-sql-unit?") available for your environment, that's great. If not, don't panic. You don't need anything sophisticated: just a set of inputs and expected outputs, and a way to run them through the function and either say "all OK!" or show any incorrect results. You can probably write a single, simple PL/SQL function that reads the inputs and expected outputs from a table and does this for you.
Finally stumbled across the answer. The Oracle package UTL_I18N contains functions to map from the browser language codes to Oracle NLS settings:
utl_i18n.map_language_from_iso;
utl_i18n.map_territory_from_iso;
The mapping doesn't seem to cope very well with multi-language settings, e.g. en-us,en;q=0.5, but as long as you just use the first 5 characters the functions seem to work ok.
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE: ar-lb,en-gb;q=0.5
v_language:
v_territory:
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE: ar-lb
v_language: ARABIC
v_territory: LEBANON
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For those of you in the Visual Studio environment, how do you feel about wrapping any of your code in #regions? (or if any other IDE has something similar...)
9 out of 10 times, code folding means that you have failed to use the SoC principle for what its worth.
I more or less feel the same thing about partial classes. If you have a piece of code you think is too big you need to chop it up in manageable (and reusable) parts, not hide or split it up.It will bite you the next time someone needs to change it, and cannot see the logic hidden in a 250 line monster of a method.
Whenever you can, pull some code out of the main class, and into a helper or factory class.
foreach (var item in Items)
{
//.. 100 lines of validation and data logic..
}
is not as readable as
foreach (var item in Items)
{
if (ValidatorClass.Validate(item))
RepositoryClass.Update(item);
}
My $0.02 anyways.
This was talked about on Coding Horror.
My personal belief is that is that they are useful, but like anything in excess can be too much.
I use it to order my code blocks into:
Enumerations
Declarations
Constructors
Methods
Event Handlers
Properties
Sometimes you might find yourself working on a team where #regions are encouraged or required. If you're like me and you can't stand messing around with folded code you can turn off outlining for C#:
Options -> Text Editor -> C# -> Advanced Tab
Uncheck "Enter outlining mode when files open"
I use #Region to hide ugly and useless automatically generated code, which really belongs in the automatically generated part of the partial class. But, when working with old projects or upgraded projects, you don't always have that luxury.
As for other types of folding, I fold Functions all the time. If you name the function well, you will never have to look inside unless you're testing something or (re-)writing it.
While I understand the problem that Jeff, et. al. have with regions, what I don't understand is why hitting CTRL+M,CTRL+L to expand all regions in a file is so difficult to deal with.
I use Textmate (Mac only) which has Code folding and I find it really useful for folding functions, I know what my "getGet" function does, I don't need it taking up 10 lines of oh so valuable screen space.
I never use it to hide a for loop, if statement or similar unless showing the code to someone else where I will hide code they have seen to avoid showing the same code twice.
I prefer partial classes as opposed to regions.
Extensive use of regions by others also give me the impression that someone, somewhere, is violating the Single Responsibility Principle and is trying to do too many things with one object.
#Tom
Partial classes are provided so that you can separate tool auto-generated code from any customisations you may need to make after the code gen has done its bit. This means your code stays intact after you re-run the codegen and doesn't get overwritten. This is a good thing.
I'm not a fan of partial classes - I try to develop my classes such that each class has a very clear, single issue for which it's responsible. To that end, I don't believe that something with a clear responsibility should be split across multiple files. That's why I don't like partial classes.
With that said, I'm on the fence about regions. For the most part, I don't use them; however, I work with code every day that includes regions - some people go really heavy on them (folding up private methods into a region and then each method folded into its own region), and some people go light on them (folding up enums, folding up attributes, etc). My general rule of thumb, as of now, is that I only put code in regions if (a) the data is likely to remain static or will not be touched very often (like enums), or (b) if there are methods that are implemented out of necessity because of subclassing or abstract method implementation, but, again, won't be touched very often.
Regions must never be used inside methods. They may be used to group methods but this must be handled with extreme caution so that the reader of the code does not go insane. There is no point in folding methods by their modifiers. But sometimes folding may increase readability. For e.g. grouping some methods that you use for working around some issues when using an external library and you won't want to visit too often may be helpful. But the coder must always seek for solutions like wrapping the library with appropriate classes in this particular example. When all else fails, use folding for improving readibility.
This is just one of those silly discussions that lead to nowhere. If you like regions, use them. If you don't, configure your editor to turn them off. There, everybody is happy.
I generally find that when dealing with code like Events in C# where there's about 10 lines of code that are actually just part of an event declaration (the EventArgs class the delegate declaration and the event declaration) Putting a region around them and then folding them out of the way makes it a little more readable.
Region folding would be fine if I didn't have to manually maintain region groupings based on features of my code that are intrinsic to the language. For example, the compiler already knows it's a constructor. The IDE's code model already knows it's a constructor. But if I want to see a view of the code where the constructors are grouped together, for some reason I have to restate the fact that these things are constructors, by physically placing them together and then putting a group around them. The same goes for any other way of slicing up a class/struct/interface. What if I change my mind and want to see the public/protected/private stuff separated out into groups first, and then grouped by member kind?
Using regions to mark out public properties (for example) is as bad as entering a redundant comment that adds nothing to what is already discernible from the code itself.
Anyway, to avoid having to use regions for that purpose, I wrote a free, open source Visual Studio 2008 IDE add-in called Ora. It provides a grouped view automatically, making it far less necessary to maintain physical grouping or to use regions. You may find it useful.
I think that it's a useful tool, when used properly. In many cases, I feel that methods and enumerations and other things that are often folded should be little black boxes. Unless you must look at them for some reason, their contents don't matter and should be as hidden as possible. However, I never fold private methods, comments, or inner classes. Methods and enums are really the only things I fold.
My approach is similar to a few others here, using regions to organize code blocks into constructors, properties, events, etc.
There's an excellent set of VS.NET macros by Roland Weigelt available from his blog entry, Better Keyboard Support for #region ... #endregion. I've been using these for years, mapping ctrl+. to collapse the current region and ctrl++ to expand it. Find that it works a lot better that the default VS.NET functionality which folds/unfolds everything.
I personally use #Regions all the time. I find that it helps me to keep things like properties, declarations, etc separated from each other.
This is probably a good answer, too!
Coding Horror
Edit: Dang, Pat beat me to this!
The Coding Horror article actual got me thinking about this as well.
Generally, I large classes I will put a region around the member variables, constants, and properties to reduce the amount of text I have to scroll through and leave everything else outside of a region. On forms I will generally group things into "member variables, constants, and properties", form functions, and event handlers. Once again, this is more so I don't have to scroll through a lot of text when I just want to review some event handlers.
I prefer #regions myself, but an old coworker couldn't stand to have things hidden. I understood his point once I worked on a page with 7 #regions, at least 3 of which had been auto-generated and had the same name, but in general I think they're a useful way of splitting things up and keeping everything less cluttered.
I really don't have a problem with using #region to organize code. Personally, I'll usually setup different regions for things like properties, event handlers, and public/private methods.
Eclipse does some of this in Java (or PHP with plugins) on its own. Allows you to fold functions and such. I tend to like it. If I know what a function does and I am not working on it, I dont need to look at it.
Emacs has a folding minor mode, but I only fire it up occasionally. Mostly when I'm working on some monstrosity inherited from another physicist who evidently had less instruction or took less care about his/her coding practices.
Using regions (or otherwise folding code) should have nothing to do with code smells (or hiding them) or any other idea of hiding code you don't want people to "easily" see.
Regions and code folding is really all about providing a way to easily group sections of code that can be collapsed/folded/hidden to minimize the amount of extraneous "noise" around what you are currently working on. If you set things up correctly (meaning actually name your regions something useful, like the name of the method contained) then you can collapse everything except for the function you are currently editing and still maintain some level of context without having to actually see the other code lines.
There probably should be some best practice type guidelines around these ideas, but I use regions extensively to provide a standard structure to my code files (I group events, class-wide fields, private properties/methods, public properties/methods). Each method or property also has a region, where the region name is the method/property name. If I have a bunch of overloaded methods, the region name is the full signature and then that entire group is wrapped in a region that is just the function name.
I personally hate regions. The only code that should be in regions in my opinion is generated code.
When I open file I always start with Ctrl+M+O. This folds to method level. When you have regions you see nothing but region names.
Before checking in I group methods/fields logically so that it looks ok after Ctrl+M+O.
If you need regions you have to much lines in your class. I also find that this is very common.
region ThisLooksLikeWellOrganizedCodeBecauseIUseRegions
// total garbage, no structure here
endregion
Enumerations
Properties
.ctors
Methods
Event Handlers
That's all I use regions for. I had no idea you could use them inside of methods.
Sounds like a terrible idea :)