I'm using code contract (actually, learning using this).
I'm facing something weird to me... I override a method, defined in a 3rd party assembly. I want to add a Contract.Require statement like this:
public class MyClass: MyParentClass
{
protected override void DoIt(MyParameter param)
{
Contract.Requires<ArgumentNullException>(param != null);
this.ExecuteMyTask(param.Something);
}
protected void ExecuteMyTask(MyParameter param)
{
Contract.Requires<ArgumentNullException>(param != null);
/* body of the method */
}
}
However, I'm getting warnings like this:
Warning 1 CodeContracts:
Method 'MyClass.DoIt(MyParameter)' overrides 'MyParentClass.DoIt(MyParameter))', thus cannot add Requires.
[edit] changed the code a bit to show alternatives issues [/edit]
If I remove the Contract.Requires in the DoIt method, I get another warning, telling me I have to provide unproven param != null
I don't understand this warning. What is the cause, and can I solve it?
You can't add extra requirements which your callers may not know about. It violates Liskov's Subtitution Principle. The point of polymorphism is that a caller should be able to treat a reference which actually refers to an instance of your derived class as if it refers to an instance of the base class.
Consider:
MyParentClass foo = GetParentClassFromSomewhere();
DoIt(null);
If that's statically determined to be valid, it's wrong for your derived class to hold up its hands and say "No! You're not meant to call DoIt with a null argument!" The aim of static analysis of contracts is that you can determine validity of calls, logic etc at compile-time... so no extra restrictions can be added at execution time, which is what happens here due to polymorphism.
A derived class can add guarantees about what it will do - what it will ensure - but it can't make any more demands from its callers for overridden methods.
I'd like to note that you can do what Jon suggested (this answers adds upon his) but also have your contract without violating LSP.
You can do so by replacing the override keyword with new.
The base remains the base; all you did is introduce another functionality (as the keywords literally suggest).
It's not ideal for static-checking because the safety could be easily casted away (cast to base-class first, then call the method) but that's a must because otherwise it would violate LSP and you do not want to do that obviously. Better than nothing though, I'd say.
In an ideal world you could also override the method and call the new one, but C# wouldn't let you do so because the methods would have the same signatures (even tho it would make perfect sense; that's the trade-off).
Related
I've seen a bunch of questions related to this subject, but none of them offers anything that would be an acceptable solution (please, no loading external Groovy scripts, no calling to sh step etc.)
The operation I need to perform is a oneliner, but pipeline limitations made it impossible to write anything useful in that unter-language...
So, here's minimal example:
#NonCPS
def encodeProperties(Map properties) {
properties.collect { k, v -> "$k=$v" }.join('|')
}
node('dockerized') {
stage('Whatever') {
properties = [foo: 123, bar: "foo"]
echo encodeProperties(properties)
}
}
Depending on whether I add or remove #NonCPS annotation, or type declaration of the argument, the error changes, but it never gives any reason for what happened. It's basically random noise, that contradicts the reality of the situation (at times it would claim that some irrelevant object doesn't have a method encodeProperties, other times it would say that it cannot find a method encodeProperties with a signature that nobody was trying to call it with (like two arguments instead of one) and so on.
From reading the documentation, which is of disastrous quality, I sort of understood that maybe functions in general aren't serializable, and that is why you need to explain this explicitly to the Groovy interpreter... I'm sorry, this makes no sense, but this is roughly what documentation says.
Obviously, trying to use collect inside stage creates a load of new errors... Which are, at least understandable in that the author confesses that their version of Groovy doesn't implement most of the Groovy standard...
It's just a typo. You defined encodeProperties but called encodeProprties.
Thanks in advance for the help -
I am new to mockito but have spent the last day looking at examples and the documentation but haven't been able to find a solution to my problem, so hopefully this is not too dumb of a question.
I want to verify that deleteLogs() calls deleteLog(Path) NUM_LOGS_TO_DELETE number of times, per path marked for delete. I don't care what the path is in the mock (since I don't want to go to the file system, cluster, etc. for the test) so I verify that deleteLog was called NUM_LOGS_TO_DELETE times with any non-null Path as a parameter. When I step through the execution however, deleteLog gets passed a null argument - this results in a NullPointerException (based on the behavior of the code I inherited).
Maybe I am doing something wrong, but verify and the use of isNotNull seems pretty straight forward...here is my code:
MonitoringController mockController = mock(MonitoringController.class);
// Call the function whose behavior I want to verify
mockController.deleteLogs();
// Verify that mockController called deleteLog the appropriate number of times
verify(mockController, Mockito.times(NUM_LOGS_TO_DELETE)).deleteLog(isNotNull(Path.class));
Thanks again
I've never used isNotNull for arguments so I can't really say what's going wrong with you code - I always use an ArgumentCaptor. Basically you tell it what type of arguments to look for, it captures them, and then after the call you can assert the values you were looking for. Give the below code a try:
ArgumentCaptor<Path> pathCaptor = ArgumentCaptor.forClass(Path.class);
verify(mockController, Mockito.times(NUM_LOGS_TO_DELETE)).deleteLog(pathCaptor.capture());
for (Path path : pathCaptor.getAllValues()) {
assertNotNull(path);
}
As it turns out, isNotNull is a method that returns null, and that's deliberate. Mockito matchers work via side effects, so it's more-or-less expected for all matchers to return dummy values like null or 0 and instead record their expectations on a stack within the Mockito framework.
The unexpected part of this is that your MonitoringController.deleteLog is actually calling your code, rather than calling Mockito's verification code. Typically this happens because deleteLog is final: Mockito works through subclasses (actually dynamic proxies), and because final prohibits subclassing, the compiler basically skips the virtual method lookup and inlines a call directly to the implementation instead of Mockito's mock. Double-check that methods you're trying to stub or verify are not final, because you're counting on them not behaving as final in your test.
It's almost never correct to call a method on a mock directly in your test; if this is a MonitoringControllerTest, you should be using a real MonitoringController and mocking its dependencies. I hope your mockController.deleteLogs() is just meant to stand in for your actual test code, where you exercise some other component that depends on and interacts with MonitoringController.
Most tests don't need mocking at all. Let's say you have this class:
class MonitoringController {
private List<Log> logs = new ArrayList<>();
public void deleteLogs() {
logs.clear();
}
public int getLogCount() {
return logs.size();
}
}
Then this would be a valid test that doesn't use Mockito:
#Test public void deleteLogsShouldReturnZeroLogCount() {
MonitoringController controllerUnderTest = new MonitoringController();
controllerUnderTest.logSomeStuff(); // presumably you've tested elsewhere
// that this works
controllerUnderTest.deleteLogs();
assertEquals(0, controllerUnderTest.getLogCount());
}
But your monitoring controller could also look like this:
class MonitoringController {
private final LogRepository logRepository;
public MonitoringController(LogRepository logRepository) {
// By passing in your dependency, you have made the creator of your class
// responsible. This is called "Inversion-of-Control" (IoC), and is a key
// tenet of dependency injection.
this.logRepository = logRepository;
}
public void deleteLogs() {
logRepository.delete(RecordMatcher.ALL);
}
public int getLogCount() {
return logRepository.count(RecordMatcher.ALL);
}
}
Suddenly it may not be so easy to test your code, because it doesn't keep state of its own. To use the same test as the above one, you would need a working LogRepository. You could write a FakeLogRepository that keeps things in memory, which is a great strategy, or you could use Mockito to make a mock for you:
#Test public void deleteLogsShouldCallRepositoryDelete() {
LogRepository mockLogRepository = Mockito.mock(LogRepository.class);
MonitoringController controllerUnderTest =
new MonitoringController(mockLogRepository);
controllerUnderTest.deleteLogs();
// Now you can check that your REAL MonitoringController calls
// the right method on your MOCK dependency.
Mockito.verify(mockLogRepository).delete(Mockito.eq(RecordMatcher.ALL));
}
This shows some of the benefits and limitations of Mockito:
You don't need the implementation to keep state any more. You don't even need getLogCount to exist.
You can also skip creating the logs, because you're testing the interaction, not the state.
You're more tightly-bound to the implementation of MonitoringController: You can't simply test that it's holding to its general contract.
Mockito can stub individual interactions, but getting them consistent is hard. If you want your LogRepository.count to return 2 until you call delete, then return 0, that would be difficult to express in Mockito. This is why it may make sense to write fake implementations to represent stateful objects and leave Mockito mocks for stateless service interfaces.
What I need: a class with two parents, which are ContextBoundObject and another class.
Why: I need to access the ContextBoundOject to log the method calls.
Composition works? As of now, no (types are not recognized, among other things).
Are other ways to do this? Yes, but not so automatable and without third-party components (maybe a T4 could do, but I'm no expert).
A more detailed explanation.
I need to extend System classes (some of which have already MarshalByRefObject (which is the parent of ContextBoundObject) for parent, for example ServiceBase and FileSystemWatcher, and some not, for example Exception and Timer) to access some inner workings of the framework, so I can log method calls (for now; in future it may change).
If I use this way I only have to add a class name to the object I want to log, instead of adding the logging calls to every method, but obviously I can't do this:
public class MyService:ServiceBase,ContextBoundObject,IDisposable{
public MyService(){}
public Dispose(){}
}
so one could try the usual solution, interfaces, but then if I call Run as in:
ServiceBase.Run(new MyService());
using a hypotethical interface IServiceBase it wouldn't work, because the type ServiceBase is not castable to IServiceBase -- it doesn't inherit from any interface. The problem is even worse with exceptions: throw only accepts a type descending from Exception.
The reverse, producing a IContextBoundObject interface, doesn't seem to work either: the logging mechanism doesn't work by methods, so I don't need to implement any, just an attribute and some small internal classes (and inheriting from ContextBoundObject, not even from MarshalByRefObject, which the metadata present as practically the same).
From what I see, extending from ContextBoundObject puts the extended class in a Proxy (probably because in this way the method calls use SyncProcessMessage(IMessage) and so can be intercepted and logged), maybe there's a way to do it without inheritance, or maybe there could be pre or post compiling techniques available for surrounding methods with logging calls (like T4 Text Templates), I don't know.
If someone wants to give this a look, I used a customized version of MSTestExtentions in my program to do the logging (of the method calls).
Any ideas are appreciated. There could be the need for more explanations, just ask.
Logging method calls is usually done using attributes to annotate classes or methods for which you want to have logging enabled. This is called Aspect Oriented Programming.
For this to work, you need a software that understands those attributes and post-processes your assembly by adding the necessary code to the methods / classes that have been annotated.
For C# there exists PostSharp. See here for an introduction.
Experimenting with proxies I found a way that apparently logs explicit calls.
Essentially I create a RealProxy like in example in the msdn, then obtain the TransparentProxy and use that as the normal object.
The logging is done in the Invoke method overridden in the customized RealProxy class.
static void Main(){
...
var ServiceClassProxy=new ServiceRealProxy(typeof(AServiceBaseClass),new object[]{/*args*/});
aServiceInstance=(AServiceBaseClass)ServiceClassProxy.GetTransparentProxy();
ServiceBase.Run(aServiceInstance);
...
}
In the proxy class the Invoke will be done like this:
class ServiceRealProxy:RealProxy{
...
[SecurityPermissionAttribute(SecurityAction.LinkDemand, Flags=SecurityPermissionFlag.Infrastructure)]
public override IMessage Invoke(IMessage myIMessage){
// remember to set the "__Uri" property you get in the constructor
...
/* logging before */
myReturnMessage = ChannelServices.SyncDispatchMessage(myIMessage);
/* logging after */
...
return myReturnMessage;
// it could be useful making a switch for all the derived types from IMessage; I see 18 of them, from
// System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.ConstructionCall
// ... to
// System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.TransitionCall
}
...
}
I have still to investigate extensively, but the logging happened. This isn't an answer to my original problem because I have still to test this on classes that don't inherit from MarshalByRefObject.
If you have a class with some plain get/set properties, is there any reason to use the getters within the class methods, or should you just use the private member variables? I think there could be more of an argument over setters (validation logic?), but I'm wondering just about getters.
For example (in Java) - is there any reason to use option 2?:
public class Something
{
private int messageId;
public int getMessageId() { return this.messageId; }
public void setMessage(int messageId) { this.messageId = messageId; }
public void doSomething()
{
// Option 1:
doSomethingWithMessageId(messageId);
// Option 2:
doSomethingWithMessageId(getMessageId());
}
}
Java programmers in general tend to be very consistent about using getter methods. I program multiple languages and I'm not that consistent about it ;)
I'd say as long as you don't make a getter it's ok to use the raw variable - for private variables. When you make a getter, you should be using only that. When I make a getter for a private field, my IDE suggests that it replace raw field accesses for me automatically when I introduce a getter. Switching to using a getter is only a few keystrokes away (and without any chance of introducing errors), so I tend to delay it until I need it.
Of course, if you want to stuff like getter-injection, some types of proxying and subclassing framworks like hibernate, you have to user getters!
With getters you wont accidentally modify the variables :) Also, if you use both getters and the "raw" variable, your code can get confused.
Also, if you use inheritance and redefined the getter methods in child classes, getter-using methods will work properly, whereas those using the raw variables would not.
If you use the getter method everywhere - and in the future perform a code-search on all calls of getMessageId() you will find all of them, whereas if you had used the private ones, you may miss some.
Also if there's ever logic to be introduced in the setter method, you wont have to worry about changing more than 1 location for it.
If the value that you are assigning to the property is a known or verified value, you could safely use the private variable directly. (Except perhaps in some special situations, where it would be obvious why that would be bad.) Whether you do or not is more a matter of taste or style. It's not a performance issue either, as the getter or setter will be inlined by the compiler if it's simple enough.
If the value is unknown to the class, you should use the property to set it, so that you can protect the property from illegal values.
Here's an example (in C#):
public class Something {
private string _value;
public string Value {
get {
return _value;
}
set {
if (value == null) throw new ArgumentNullException();
_value = value;
}
}
public Something() {
// using a known value
_value = "undefined";
}
public Something(string initValue) {
// using an unknown value
Value = initValue;
}
}
If you use the getter you're ensuring you'll get the value after any logic/decisions have been applied to it. This probably isn't your typical situation but when it is, you'll thank yourself for this.
Unless I have a specific use case to use the internal field directly in the enclosing class, I've always felt that it's important to use access the field the same way it is accessed publicly. This ensures consistency in the return values across the board should there ever be any need to add some post-processing to the field via the getter method, or property. I feel like it's perfectly fine to access the raw field if you want its raw value for one reason or another.
More often than not, the getter encapsulation is plain and simple boilerplate code -- you're most likely not returning anything other than the field's value itself. However, in the case where you may want to change the way the data is presented at some point in the future, it's one less refactoring you have to make internally.
I read this answer and its comments and I'm curious: Are there any reasons for not using this / Self / Me ?
BTW: I'm sorry if this has been asked before, it seems that it is impossible to search for the word this on SO.
Warning: Purely subjective answer below.
I think the best "reason" for not using this/self/me is brevity. If it's already a member variable/function then why redundantly add the prefix?
Personally I avoid the use of this/self/me unless it's necessary to disambiguate a particular expression for the compiler. Many people disagree with this but I haven't ever had it be a real sticking point in any group I've worked for.
I think most of the common scenarios have been covered in the two posts already cited; mainly brevity and redundancy vs clarity - a minor addition: in C#, it is required to use "this" in order to access an "extension method" for the current type - i.e.
this.Foo();
where Foo() is declared externally as:
public static void Foo(this SomeType obj) {...}
It clarifies in some instances, like this example in c#:
public class SomeClass
{
private string stringvar = "";
public SomeClass(string stringvar)
{
this.stringvar = stringvar;
}
}
If you use StyleCop with all the rules on, it makes you put the this. in. Since I started using it I find my code is more readable, but that's personal preference.
I think this is a non-issue, because it only adds more readability to the code which is a good thing.
For some languages, like PHP, it is even mandatory to prefix with $this-> if you need to use class fields or methods.
I don't like the fact that it makes some lines unnecessarily longer than they could be, if PHP had some way to reference class members without it.
I personally find that this.whatever is less readable. You may not notice the difference in a 2-line method, but wait until you get this.variable and this.othervariable everywhere in a class.
Furthermore, I think that use of this. was found as a replacement for a part of the much hated Hungarian notation. Some people out there found out that it's still clearer for the reader to see that a variable is a class member, and this. did the trick. But why fool ourselves and not use the plain old "m_" or simply "_" for that, if we need the extra clarity? It's 5 characters vs. 2 (or even 1). Less typing, same result.
Having said that, the choice of style is still a matter of personal preference. It's hard to convince somebody used to read code in a certain way that is useful to change it.
well, eclipse does color fields, arguments and local variables in different colors, so at least working in eclipse environment there is no need to syntactically distinguish fields in order to specially mark them as "fields" for yourself and generations to come.
It was asked before indeed, in the "variable in java" context:
Do you prefix your instance variable with ‘this’ in java ?
The main recurrent reason seems to be:
"it increases the visual noise you need to sift through to find the meaning of the code."
Readability, in other word... which I do not buy, I find this. very useful.
That sounds like nonsense to me. Using 'this' can make the code nicer, and I can see no problems with it. Policies like that is stupid (at least when you don't even tell people why they are in place).
as for me i use this to call methods of an instantiated object whereas self is for a static method
In VB.NET one of the common practice I use is the following code :
Class Test
Private IntVar AS Integer
Public Function New(intVar As Integer)
Me.Intvar = intvar
End Function
End Class
Not all the time but mostly Me / this / self is quite useful. Clarifies the scope that you are talking.
In a typical setter method (taken from lagerdalek's answer):
string name;
public void SetName(string name)
{
this.name = name;
}
If you didn't use it, the compiler wouldn't know you were referring to the member variable.
The use of this. is to tell the compiler that you need to access a member variable - which is out of the immediate scope of the method. Creating a variable within a method which is the same name as a member variable is perfectly legal, just like overriding a method in a class which has extended another class is perfectly legal.
However, if you still need to use the super class's method, you use super. In my opinion using this. is no worse than using super. and allows the programmer more flexibility in their code.
As far as I'm concerned readability doesn't even come into it, it's all about accessibility of your variables.
In the end it's always a matter of personal choice. Personally, I use this coding convention:
public class Foo
{
public string Bar
{
get
{
return this.bar;
}
/*set
{
this.bar = value;
}*/
}
private readonly string bar;
public Foo(string bar)
{
this.bar = bar;
}
}
So for me "this" is actually necessary to keep the constructor readable.
Edit: the exact same example has been posted by "sinje" while I was writing the code above.
Not only do I frequently use "this". I sometimes use "that".
class Foo
{
private string bar;
public int Compare(Foo that)
{
if(this.bar == that.bar)
{
...
And so on. "That" in my code usually means another instance of the same class.
'this.' in code always suggests to me that the coder has used intellisense (or other IDE equivalents) to do their heavy lifting.
I am certainly guilty of this, however I do, for purely vanity reasons, remove them afterwards.
The only other reasons I use them are to qualify an ambiguous variable (bad practice) or build an extension method
Qualifying a variable
string name; //should use something like _name or m_name
public void SetName(string name)
{
this.name = name;
}