Code Smell 133 - Hardcoded IF Conditions

Hard coding is fine. For a short period of time

TL;DR: Don't leave a hardcoded mess on IFs.

Problems

• Testability
• Hardcoded values
• Open/Closed Principle Violation

Solutions

1. Replace all?IFs?with a dynamic condition or?polymorphism.

Context

Hard-coding?iF?conditions is great when doing?Test-Driven Development.

We need to clean up stuff.

Sample Code

Wrong

private string FindCountryName (string internetCode)
{
  if (internetCode == "de")
    return "Germany";
  else if(internetCode == "fr") 
    return "France";
  else if(internetCode == "ar")
    return "Argentina";
    //lots of elses
  else
    return "Suffix not Valid";
}        

Right

private string[] country_names = {"Germany", "France", "Argentina"} //lots more
private string[] Internet_code_suffixes= {"de", "fr", "ar" } //more

private Dictionary<string, string> Internet_codes = new Dictionary<string, string>();

//There are more efficient ways for collection iteration
//This pseudocode is for illustration
int currentIndex = 0; 
foreach (var suffix in Internet_code_suffixes) {
  Internet_codes.Add(suffix, Internet_codes[currentIndex]);
  currentIndex++;
}

private string FindCountryName(string internetCode) {
  return Internet_codes[internetCode];
}        

Detection

[X] Automatic

By checking If/else conditions we can detect hard-coded conditions.

Tags

• IFs

Conclusion

In the past, hard-coding was not an option.

With modern methodologies, we learn by hard-coding, and then, we generalize and refactor our solutions.

Relations

Code Smell 36 - Switch case elseif else if statements

Code Smell 102 - Arrow Code

More Info

• How to Get Rid of IFs forever
• Test Driven Development

Credits

Photo by?Jessica Johnston?on Unsplash

Don't be (too) clever. My point was to discourage overly clever code because "clever code" is hard to write, easy to get wrong, harder to maintain, and often no faster than simpler alternatives because it can be hard to optimize.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Software Engineering Great Quotes

This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.

How to Find the Stinky parts of your Code