I recently started a new job. With every new job comes a new codebase. This is probably my twentieth job. So I've seen a lot of codebases.
Unfortu...
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Nice Article,
I think that example can be shorter (avoiding unnecessary declarations and/or sentences) also is mixing
snake casewithcamel caseand is not a good practice.Thanks for share!
I don't consider a single
returnwith a compound condition readable. In general, simply having less lines doesn't improve code.I agree with Marco. To me "if (boolean-expression) return true" is a definite code smell. I would format the compound boolean expression so that each part has a line of its own though.
That's interesting you consider it a code smell. I have some examples for future articles where I explore this raw boolean
returnstatements.In this case, I still wouldn't pack them down into one. At least not without some intermediate steps to improve the readability beyond just line breaks.
I agree with Marco, even we can do more functions:
That way is easy to read. Obviously, that can be refactored.
I'll explore this in a future post.
As a tangent, I never understood developers need to wrap the entire compound condition in parenthesis.
I'd agree with carlos.js' solution, albeit each of the conditions being on separate lines. This supports the functions being just return statements, and giving clearer meaning (context) to the conditions you're checking. Also, it completely eliminates the branch logic in a function designed purely for information, a good nod to readable code.
The wrapping parenthesis must be a typo as there's no corresponding closing outer parenthesis. But that is an example of why you shouldn't wrap the condition in parentheses. There is another issue with Carlos.js' example, $scope is no longer used which means this must be a function in a class which means all those nice function calls are missing
$this->100% agree that conditional returns of booleans is a smell, generally one of the first things I look for in code review.
At least for this example, is a good option use a single
returnstatement, in case that we have more comparisons or complex ones would be better split on several statements.The code is readable also I checked the code using these pages: phpcodechecker.com/ and piliapp.com/php-syntax-check/, it doesn't have issues.
Hi,
I did not find a php checker that indicates some bad practices in the code contrary to those of the javascript language (esprima.org/demo/validate.html, extendsclass.com/javascript-fiddle...).
Exactly, packing conditionals into a single statement just to reduce the number of lines doesn't necessarily make the code more readable. I avoid compound conditions as much as possible. If I have to absolutely use them, I try to wrap them in a function with a name that better documents its purpose. Thanks for the great article.
I agree with you. I also avoid compound conditions as much as possible. They can easily introduce silent bugs into your code and there's the mental Overhead that comes with them When reading the code Compared to simple if Statements
Also the code with if statements is more maintainable and open to new features/improvements since each decision has its own block. For example you could easily add a Log message for each condition... Can't say the same for a single return statement.
Any programmer. (Even a newbie) can easily grok the if statements in one glance
In general concise code can be unreadable. But this example has the same content as the code in the blog post. There are more lines, brackets and boilerplate, but there is no additional information.
And I'd prefer getting rid of mixed cases, too. "Mix cases but be consistent" is not an option for me ;)
For me, I strongly agree with you, having 15 clean lines is much better than one condensed line. Consider someone new reading the both codebases: one look at the 15 lines will be enough to read and understand it. While they will struggle to evaluate all the booleans in their heads in the second option. Most probably will take longer to grasp.
I think that all these attempts to reduce the character count reduce the readability.
Making a compound like this, split across several lines, means that the function as a whole will take someone longer to scan.
There is no benefit to it.
The initial example really separates the 3 ways you can "view".
The shorter example still does that, but the condensing makes it harder to separate the content IMO. For instance if the 3rd line was a bit longer that the if check needed two lines, it might require some more mental power to keep things separate in your head. First way wouldn't have had this problem as much.
That said, to support at a glance, what does this do, I may opt to pull the conditions into their own functions such that the check becomes:
return IsPublic(...) || IsAdmin(...) || IsOwner(...);
At a glance I can tell what my conditions are for when I canView. It captures essentially the requirements in very plain english. If I care about how those rules are defined I can look into each one explicitly to find what I might be looking for.
Put it this way - I can read and understand the verbose example on my phone. Your condensed version takes longer for me to parse, partly because it's too dense to easily separate out the parenthesised conditions and partly because I have to scroll horizontally back and forth to even read it.
To my eyes this is totally unreadable. The whole point was to make it easy to read and comprehend, not to just make it short for the sake of shortness.
because i don't trust frameworks blindly:
taking advantages of boolean shortcuts : assuming that the owner of content is always allowed to view whatever $scope it is
Ungly code 😡
?
You are totally right!
Coding style is a pretty big thing, but most developers get this right in the first year. Some languages even come with their own tools to enforce style guides. Using Pettier in my JavaScript projects really helped me to stop worrying.
Naming things is generally a bit harder, I think, but many developers really use bad names for things. Strange abbreviations or single character variables just because they think a 10 char name would be ugly... because they want to reduce package size, etc. So while I think naming is sometimes really hard, 80% of all code can really benefit from simply writing out everything.
Avoiding nesting is really important and often not followed by even experienced developers. Probably because, as you get better, you think you can handle things better, haha. I think it should be kept in mind over the whole process, not only for conditionals or functions, but also for objects and general software architecture.
I think this depends heavily on company culture. I know plenty of PHP developers who have been at it for well over a decade who don't take coding style seriously.
Ah yes, I saw some 'nice' PHP codebases in my time too :)
Inline conditions inside if statements discard the opportunity for a name, as a maintainer I care more about the intent of the code at the time of creation than its implementation, please keep telling me intent through names at every opportunity
By breaking everything down I wonder if $is_private is even required?
Hi Jason, great article congratulations.
By the way, i did not see anything commenting about this so there it go, you can clean even more replacing the 3
ifswith a singleswitchusing multiple case validation like this;`
let me know what you think.
The original code (from Part 1) was a
switchstatement. Personally, I don't findswitchstatements very readable. Especially with conditions in thecase.Cool!
I prefer "switch" because i like to write
return trueonly one time. 😁If you use C#, you can add the StyleCop.Analyzers nuget package and it highlights inconsistencies. It also comes with code fixes that allow you to fix all instances of a violation in the entire solution with one click.
Then there's static code analysis. Between the two, all that is really left to the programmer is models, appropriate layering of your code, security, performance and business logic... well... on the backend anyway.
This article brings up one of my Pet Peeves - inheriting or resurrecting projects that have very poor coding style and confusing or non-existent naming conventions. I quit one job because of it, and have completely reorganized a project in the 2nd job. At some point you just have to come to terms with either making wholesale changes to make it readable or abandoning the project because it can never be maintained. If a the sourcecode doesn't have a good, solid style and use understandable naming conventions, the code is crap, full of bugs, and a maintenance nightmare. Always!
Nice job, I've been liking these kind of posts you've been doing lately, and your final function is way better.
However, I feel like playing along, too. How about this? :)
I don't know the context, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't even matter if the
$scopeis'private', if the current user is the owner.I don't think a return before the function ends is good code. A function or method should only have one return.
function canView($scope, $ownerId) {
$canView = $scope === 'public';
if (! $canView) {
$canView = Auth::user()->hasRole('admin');
}
if (! $canView) {
$canView = $scope === 'private' && Auth::user()->id === $ownerId;
}
return $canView;
}
As noted in the article, I don't believe in only one return. I admit there are trade-offs on both sides, in this case you are tracking
$canViewwhich carries it's own complexity.BTW: can somebody explain which keyword are starting and ending code snippets?
Yes! I Totally agree with you. The code you provide is a perfect example.
I also consider variables should be relevant, short doesn't mean better, even with database tables and columns. On my last work they use "a_1, a_2, b_c" for clientes names!! D:
always consider that at some point on time you will forget about the code and you will need to back and read it again, so keep it clear. Also for new co-workers.
Excellent article, and very good points!
In some languages, the nesting is about more than just style. Branch prediction and instruction cache misses (from jump instructions) are very real things, and they can completely tank performance when structured incorrectly.
When possible, I prefer to use conditionals to catch
off-cases, rather than the most frequent case, simply because that takes the best advantage of the performance gains from the branch prediction. The computer can get used to the condition evaluatingfalse, which it will most of the time; if that prediction misses, I'm already going to have to deal with additional jump instructions and whatnot to handle the off-case, so performance can reasonably be considered (somewhat) shot at that point anyway. :wink:On an unrelated subject, I also advocate commenting intent as a part of clean code. We should always be able to tell what the code does, but why is not something the code naturally expresses. (I discuss that more in my article, Your Project Isn't Done Yet).
I disagree that formatting, and formatting consistency, is so important. I've seen enough perfectly formatted garbage code and poorly formatted clean code to doubt the major significance of formatting. I will agree that it makes legible code even easier to read, but I disagree that on its own it brings anything.
Too often I see projects start to go overboard with their style guidelines. They can get in the way and even consume a project.
Defintily good names help. I don't think we should blame people for having bad names though. It's a very contextual thing. While working on a piece of code one name seems totally appropriate, but later, when missing context, it seems a bit lacking. But we can't just add full context to all names, we have to rely on people understanding the surrounding code. Otherwise we'd end up with ridiculously long names for everything -- and they still wouldn't be enough.
Avoiding nesting code is good. But alas, there are a camp of people that are, for some reason, utterly opposed to early returns and break statements. Make sure you show that piece of code during an interview to avoid hiring those people! :)
Consistently formatted code is surely ideal. But previous efforts I've been a part of have suffered from some combination of the following:
So I've basically landed here: to all who are driven to format new or legacy code, go nuts! People tend to fall in line if there's already momentum.
However: make any formatting-only changes In. Their. Own. Commit. If someone has to review a commit where the whole file changed to figure out why a bug was introduced, that will be a huge fail...
Agreed about momentum and separate commit.
However, most of your points are moot when automating this process with a formatter/linter as suggested.
If it's a new code base or new file, agreed. But what about modifying a legacy file to introduce/change actual functionality -- the automated formatter/linter may obscure the actual changes with a complete reformat, correct?
To your point, do it in a separate commit. Run the formatter/linter one time manually across the entire codebase. This will provide a basis (momentum) and from then on only changed files need to be formatted/linted (which could be automated).
Seems like you don't agree with any of the post then…
I agree with the idea of clean code in general. And I agree that code example at the end of an article became much better than it was before. And I just added some more things I assume as "clean code" principles.
Fair. Nevertheless, they contradict mine. One of the contributing factors of messy code is that everyone disagrees on "clean code".
For clarity, I don't believe in a having single return statement. And there is nothing wrong with temporarily naming a variable something obviously incomplete in the spirit of maintaining momentum.
you're right, this makes the programmer to code more and even make them fall in love and easy to spot the error and the understanding of the code will be ease for other programmer to testify it ! .
And naming the variable is toughest job in the world .ahaha. seriously though ,many are lazy to naming the lengthy variable. specially in upperCamel letter . I practiced to naming the variable in upperCamel even-though it was long ,its hard to follow first after being practiced with that now its easy to naming the variable ,I don't worry how much the length of the variable name because u wont forgot during the middle of the code ,I dont need to go check the top of the code to refer our variable name.
To get too granular for anyone's good- can you say why the break in the private case of the switch is indented but not in the public case? Guessing it has something to do with the one liner vs the logic, but curious to see a professional's reasoning?
Sorry but your final "avoid nested code" alters the original method:
1) "owner_id" was never compared to anything in the original code, but you compared with "user()->id" field. In the original code it was just checked to be Valid/NonNull.
2) you never checked if "Auth::user()" returns a NOT NULL value before use it, so your code could give a NullPointer Exception if it returns NULL and you directly access to "->id" field.
You're right. I corrected the initial examples.
As far as the
nullcheck, it is indeed missing. But to your point, adding it would alter the existing behavior. I have left it off for simplicity.1 week I read something about clean code in python , and the PEP8 style guide , i learn about it and start practice now i'm using Pylinter for sublime text and found it very cool it help me to write clean and readable code and discover that the code i have wrote before was very dirty and ugly,.....
I agree that writing a clean code is necessary. But I have something to add:
1) Decide whether you're using a camel case or not and stick to it, don't mix it up (I personally prefer using camel case in my projects).
2) Only one return statement per function - makes it much easier to read and debug, less likely to have hidden bugs.
3) I don't agree that naming a variable $bob or $whatever to rename it later is a good solution, you could easily forget to do this or be to "tired and lazy" after finishing with the feature. I always name variables clearly from the moment I create it, yes, it could be not easy at first, but you get used to it and it becomes automatic. And if later you decide that you don't like the name, you could always change it, but even if you don't - it still would be meaningful.
4) Also, it doesn't feel right when I see OOP mixed up with functional programming.
Here's my variation of this code:
Couldn't agree more. Was very close to writing my own article emphasizing the need to be clear when writing code.
To be more specific, the guidelines you iterated, help read code as if it was a story, or a self explanatory recipe. Bad naming often helps find bad code separation patterns, while nesting tends to make code hard to follow. Very good post!
I think that example can be shorter too!
function canView($scope, $ownerId) {
return ($scope === 'public' ||
Auth::user()->hasRole('admin') ||
($scope === 'private' && Auth::user()->id === $ownerId));
}
As noted in other comments, it's not about shorter, it's about more readable.
I think in the first image you first check for authorization of the user and then check the scope. This way we will avoid code execution for unauthorized user.
This is a beautiful post. Thanks. I'd keep this in mind.
Great read. This might push me over the edge to actually start doing it. Been thinking about it for a while to have 1 style.
I would say that we should think about 'write code as a document'
Great article, love that you went step by step through your proposed process and showed each small change and how much individual impact it had.
Thanks. Definitely check out BaseCode as it has over 40 such examples.
Great article. 👍
Good article. I also experienced the same and I believed in "Naming things clearly". That's where I am find this article relevant.
Simple and easy tips to create maintainable code.
The first one make me want to cry.. Great tips. Thanks !
ATM I code in Go. It has an awesome formatting tool named gofmt. It allows me to not worry about formatting completely. It does it's job pretty well.
Ah, yes. The article is nice, thank you.
Exactly. Many languages have a built in coding style, such as Python and Go. While this may seem rigid at first, it improves developer focus as it removes the distraction to meticulously format code.