Coding Best Practices

Coding best practices The Jaxara IT Ltd. Mahmudul Haque Azad

Coding… Anybody can write code. With a few months of programming experience, you can write 'working applications'. Making it work is easy, but doing it the right way requires more work, than just making it work. Believe it, majority of the programmers write 'working code', but not ‘good code'. Writing 'good code' is an art and you must learn and practice it. Following are the characteristics of good code. Reliable Maintainable Efficient If your code is not reliable and maintainable, you (and your company) will be spending lot of time to identify issues, trying to understand code etc throughout the life of your application.

Naming Conventions and Standards The terms Pascal Casing and Camel Casing are used throughout this document. Pascal Casing - First character of all words are Upper Case and other characters are lower case. Example: B ack C olor Camel Casing - First character of all words, except the first word are Upper Case and other characters are lower case. Example: b ack C olor

Naming Conventions and Standards (cont.) 1. Use Pascal casing for Class names public class H ello W orld { ... } 2 . Use Pascal casing for Method names void S ay H ello (string name ) { ... } 3. Use Camel casing for variables and method parameters int t otal C ount = 0; void S ay H ello( string name) { string f ull M essage = "Hello " + name ; ... } 4. Use the prefix “ I ” with Camel Casing for interfaces ( Example: I Entity )

Naming Conventions and Standards (cont.) 5. Use meaningful , descriptive words to name variables. Do not use abbreviations. Good string address int salary Not Good: string nam string addr int sal 6. Do not use single character variable names like i, n, s etc. Use names like index, temp One exception in this case would be variables used for iterations in loops: for ( int i = 0; i < count; i++ ) { ... } If the variable is used only as a counter for iteration and is not used anywhere else in the loop, many people still like to use a single char variable (i) instead of inventing a different suitable name.

Naming Conventions and Standards (cont.) 7. Do not use underscores (_) for local variable names. 8. All member variables must be prefixed with underscore (_) so that they can be identified from other local variables. 9. Do not use variable names that resemble keywords. 10. Prefix boolean variables, properties and methods with “ is ” or similar prefixes. Ex: private bool _isFinished 11. File name should match with class name. For example, for the class HelloWorld, the file name should be HelloWorld.cs (or, HelloWorld.vb) 12. Use Pascal Case for file names.

Naming Conventions and Standards 13. Use appropriate prefix for the UI elements so that you can identify them from the rest of the variables. A brief list is given below. Since .NET has given several controls, you may have to arrive at a complete list of standard prefixes for each of the controls (including third party controls) you are using. Example:

Naming Conventions and Standards 1. Use TAB for indentation. Do not use SPACES. Define the Tab size as 4. 2. Comments should be in the same level as the code (use the same level of indentation). Good: // Format a message and display string fullMessage = "Hello " + name; DateTime currentTime = DateTime.Now; string message = fullMessage + ", Thanks " MessageBox .Show ( message ); Not Good: // Format a message and display string fullMessage = "Hello " + name; DateTime currentTime = DateTime.Now; string message = fullMessage + ", Thanks ” MessageBox .Show ( message );

Naming Conventions and Standards 3. Curly braces ( {} ) should be in the same level as the code outside the braces. 4. There should be one and only one single blank line between each method inside the class. 5. The curly braces should be on a separate line and not in the same line as if, for etc. Good: if ( ... ) { // Do something } Not Good: if ( ... ) { // Do something }

Naming Conventions and Standards 6. Use one blank line to separate logical groups of code. Good: bool SayHello ( string name ) { string fullMessage = "Hello " + name; DateTime currentTime = DateTime. Now; string message = fullMessage + ", the time is : " + currentTime.ToShortTimeString(); MessageBox .Show ( message ); if ( ... ) { // Do something // ... return false ; } return true ; } Not Good: bool SayHello ( string name) { string fullMessage = "Hello " + name; DateTime currentTime = DateTime .Now; string message = fullMessage + ", the time is : " + currentTime.ToShortTimeString(); MessageBox .Show ( message ); if ( ... ) { // Do something // ... return false ; } return true ; }

Naming Conventions and Standards 7. Use a single space before and after each operator and brackets. Good: if ( showResult == true ) { for ( int i = 0; i < 10; i++ ) { // } } Not Good: if (showResult== true ) { for ( int i= 0;i<10;i++) { // } } 8. Keep private member variables, properties and methods in the top of the file and public members in the bottom.

Indentation and Spacing 9. Use #region to group related pieces of code together. If you use proper grouping using #region , the page should like this when all definitions are collapsed.

Good Programming practices 1. Avoid writing very long methods. A method should typically have 1~25 lines of code. If a method has more than 25 lines of code, you must consider re factoring into separate methods. 2. Method name should tell what it does. Do not use mis-leading names. If the method name is obvious, there is no need of documentation explaining what the method does. Good: void SavePhoneNumber ( string phoneNumber ) { // Save the phone number. } Not Good: // This method will save the phone number. void SaveDetails ( string phoneNumber ) { // Save the phone number. }

Good Programming practices 3. A method should do only 'one job'. Do not combine more than one job in a single method, even if those jobs are very small. Good: // Save the address. SaveAddress ( address ); // Send an email to the supervisor to inform that the address is updated. SendEmail ( address, email ); void SaveAddress ( string address ) { // Save the address. // ... } void SendEmail ( string address, string email ) { // Send an email to inform the supervisor that the address is changed. // ... } Not Good: // Save address and send an email to the supervisor to inform that // the address is updated. SaveAddress ( address, email ); void SaveAddress ( string address, string email ) { // Job 1. // Save the address. // ... // Job 2. // Send an email to inform the supervisor that the address is changed. // ... }

Good Programming practices 4. Use the c# or VB.NET specific types (aliases), rather than the types defined in System namespace. int age; (not I nt 16 ) string name; (not S tring ) object contactInfo; (not O bject ) 5. Do not hardcode numbers. Use constants instead. Declare constant in the top of the file or in a separate constant file and use it in your code. However, using constants are also not recommended. You should use the constants in the config file or database so that you can change it later. Declare them as constants only if you are sure this value will never need to be changed. 6. Do not hardcode strings. Use resource files i.e. a separate constant file. 7. Convert strings to lowercase or upper case before comparing. This will ensure the string will match even if the string being compared has a different case. if ( name.ToLower() == “john” ) { //… }

Good Programming practices 9. Always watch for unexpected values. For example, if you are using a parameter with 2 possible values, never assume that if one is not matching then the only possibility is the other value. Good: if ( memberType == eMemberTypes.Registered ) { // Registered user… do something… } else if ( memberType == eMemberTypes.Guest ) { // Guest user... do something… } else { // Un expected user type. Throw an exception throw new Exception (“Un expected value “ + memberType.ToString() + “’.”) // If we introduce a new user type in future, we can easily find // the problem here. } Not Good: if ( memberType == eMemberTypes.Registered ) { // Registered user… do something… } else { // Guest user... do something… // If we introduce another user type in future, this code will // fail and will not be noticed. }

Good Programming practices 10. Use String.Empty instead of “” Good: If ( name == String.Empty ) { // do something } Not Good: If ( name == “” ) { // do something } 11. Do not make the member variables public or protected. Keep them private and expose public/protected Properties. 12. The event handler should not contain the code to perform the required action. Rather call another method from the event handler. 13. Do not programmatically click a button to execute the same action you have written in the button click event. Rather, call the same method which is called by the button click event handler. 14. Never hardcode a path or drive name in code. Get the application path programmatically and use relative path.

Good Programming practices 15. Use enum wherever required. Do not use numbers or strings to indicate discrete values. Good: enum MailType { Html, PlainText, Attachment } void SendMail ( string message, MailType mailType) { switch ( mailType ) { case MailType.Html: // Do something break ; case MailType.PlainText: // Do something break ; case MailType.Attachment: // Do something break ; default : // Do something break ; } } Not Good: void SendMail ( string message, string mailType) { switch ( mailType ) { case "Html": // Do something break ; case "PlainText": // Do something break ; case "Attachment": // Do something break ; default : // Do something break ; } }

Good Programming practices 16. Error messages should help the user to solve the problem. Never give error messages like "Error in Application", "There is an error" etc. Instead give specific messages like "Failed to update database. Please make sure the login id and password are correct.“ 17. Show short and friendly message to the user. But log the actual error with all possible information. This will help a lot in diagnosing problems. 18. Do not have more than one class in a single file. 19. Avoid having very large files. If a single file has more than 1000 lines of code, it is a good candidate for refactoring. Split them logically into two or more classes. 20. Avoid public methods and properties, unless they really need to be accessed from outside the class. Use “ internal ” if they are accessed only within the same assembly.

Good Programming practices 21. Avoid passing too many parameters to a method. If you have more than 4~5 parameters, it is a good candidate to define a class or structure. 22. If you have a method returning a collection, return an empty collection instead of null, if you have no data to return. For example, if you have a method returning an ArrayList, always return a valid ArrayList. If you have no items to return, then return a valid ArrayList with 0 items. This will make it easy for the calling application to just check for the “count” rather than doing an additional check for “null”. 23. If you are opening database connections, sockets, file stream etc, always close them in the finally block. This will ensure that even if an exception occurs after opening the connection, it will be safely closed in the finally block. 24. Declare variables as close as possible to where it is first used. Use one variable declaration per line.

Good Programming practices 25. Use StringBuilder class instead of String when you have to manipulate string objects in a loop. The String object works in weird way in .NET. Each time you append a string, it is actually discarding the old string object and recreating a new object, which is a relatively expensive operations. Consider the following example: public string ComposeMessage ( string [] lines) { string message = string .Empty; for ( int i = 0; i < lines.Length; i++) { message += lines [i]; } return message; } In the above example, it may look like we are just appending to the string object ‘message’. But what is happening in reality is, the string object is discarded in each iteration and recreated and appending the line to it. If your loop has several iterations, then it is a good idea to use StringBuilder class instead of String object. See the example where the String object is replaced with StringBuilder. public string ComposeMessage ( string [] lines) { StringBuilder message = new StringBuilder (); for ( int i = 0; i < lines.Length; i++) { message.Append( lines[i] ); } return message.ToString(); }

Good Programming practices 26. Do not use session variables throughout the code. Use session variables only within the classes and expose methods to access the value stored in the session variable. A class can access session using System.Web.HttpCOntext.Current.Session 27. Do not store large objects in session. Storing large objects in session may consume lot of server memory depending on the number of users. 28. Always use style sheet to control the look and feel of the pages. Never specify font name and font size in any of the pages. Use appropriate style class. This will help you to change the UI of your application easily in future. Also, if you like to support customizing the UI for each customer, it is just a matter of developing another style sheet for them

Good Programming practices 29. Never access database from the UI pages. Always have a data layer class which performs all the database related tasks. This will help you support or migrate to another database back end easily. 30. Use try-catch in your data layer to catch all database exceptions. This exception handler should record all exceptions from the database. The details recorded should include the name of the command being executed, stored proc name, parameters, connection string used etc. After recording the exception, it could be re thrown so that another layer in the application can catch it and take appropriate action.

Coding Best Practices

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Coding Best Practices