checkstyle module name ConstantName vs ConstantNameCheck - checkstyle

I have a question to ask regarding checkstyle.
It seems that the checkstyle api accepts both module name,
ConstantName and ConstantNameCheck (ConstantName with Check concatenated) for the configuration file, checkstyle.xml.
I would like to ask why is there a double standard here even though documentations on http://checkstyle.sourceforge.net/ only promotes ConstantName module and what is the difference between using either of them? Will either one of them gets deprecated in future?
Thanks!

Behind the scenes, the ConstantName check is implemented by a Java class called
com.puppycrawl.tools.checkstyle.checks.naming.ConstantNameCheck.
You could actually refer to the module in checkstyle.xml by this so-called "fully qualified" name. The other notations are shorthand offered by Checkstyle for convenience. ConstantNameCheck is the simple name of the implementing Java class, and ConstantName is still shorter. Checkstyle will try all three variants when looking for the module in your checkstyle.xml. So, there is no difference between these notations.
The recommended way is to use the most concise form, ConstantName, but as far as I know, none of the other forms is going to get deprecated any time soon.

Related

Is it possible to write a dual pass checkstyle check?

I have two situations I need a checkstyle check for. Let's say I have a bunch of objects with the annotation #BusinessLogic. I want to do a first pass through all *.java files creating a Set with the full classnames of these objects. Let's say ONE of the classes here is MyBusinessLogic. NEXT, and as part of a custom checkstyle checker, I want to go through and fail the build if there is any lines of code that say "new MyBusinessLogic()" in any of the code. We want to force DI when objects are annotated with #BusinessLogic. Is this possible with checkstyle? I am not sure checkstyle does a dual pass.
Another option I am considering is some gradle plugin perhaps that scans all java files and writes to a file the list of classes annotated with #BusinessLogic and then running checkstyle after that where my checker reads in the file?
My next situation is I have a library delivered as a jar so in that jar, I also have classes annotated with #BusinessLogic and I need to make sure those are also added to my list of classes that should not be newed up manually and only created with dependency injection.
Follow up question from the previous question here after reading through checkstyle docs:
How to enforce this pattern via gradle plugins?
thanks,
Dean
Is it possible to write a dual pass checkstyle check?
Possible, yes, but not officially supported. Support would come at https://github.com/checkstyle/checkstyle/issues/3540 but it hasn't been agreed on.
Multi-file validation is possible with FileSets (still not officially supported), but it becomes harder with TreeWalker checks. This is because TreeWalker doesn't chain finishProcessing to the checks. You can implement your own TreeWalker that will chain this finishProcessing to implementation of AbstractChecks.
You will have to do everything in 1 pass with this method. Log all new XXX and classes with annotation #YYY. In the finishProcessing method, correlate the information obtained between the 2 and print a violation when you have a match.
I have a library delivered as a jar
Checkstyle does not support reading JARs or bytecode. You can always create a hard coded list as an alternative. The only other way is build your own reader into Checkstyle.

Should I follow the StyleCop rules for the C# codes I write in Razor syntax?

Especially about the "SA1126: PrefixCallsCorrectly" rule which tells us to use "this." prefix for instance members.
Should I follow these rules in the Razor syntax?
Example:
<span>Name: #this.Model.Name</span>
Or:
<span>#this.Html.DisplayFor(m => m.Name)</span>
You may notice that the "this." is ineffective here (I'm agree). I want to follow a rule which is applicable for all my everyday codes.
And doesn't StyleCop check the Razor files?
Well, the usage of the "this" prefix is kind of a personal (which can be argumented) choice.
You can find an interesting discussion on this point here
Why does StyleCop recommend prefixing method or property calls with "this"?
By the way, Resharper, for example, has the inverse rule by default (remove "useless" this - meaning useless for the compiler).
But frankly, in a View, I think it's more noise than help.
Other point : use HtmlHelpers like #Html.DisplayTextFor(m => m.Name) in your case, as they're strongly typed, linked to model, take care of null values, etc.
Should I follow these rules in the Razor syntax?
If you have decided that it's worthwhile adding the "this" in your .cs files, why wouldn't you want to apply it to C# code elsewhere, such as embedded in a Razor view file? What if you were to have multiple lines of C# code in a #{ } block? Would the "this" start to seem more useful? (The issue of whether "this" is generally worthwhile is not particularly relevant here since you have presumably already standardized on using it.)
And doesn't StyleCop check the Razor files?
Nope, StyleCop does not check Razor files. The only parser currently included with StyleCop is a C# parser, which only examines files with a ".cs" extension.

What are namespaces for ? what about usages?

what is the purpose of namespaces ?
and, more important, should they be used as objects in java (things that have data and functions and that try to achieve encapsulation) ? is this idea to far fetched ? :)
or should they be used as packages in java ?
or should they be used more generally as a module system or something ?
Given that you use the Clojure tag, I suppose that you'll be interested in a Clojure-specific answer:
what is the purpose of namespaces ?
Clojure namespaces, Java packages, Haskell / Python / whatever modules... At a very high level, they're all different names for the same basic mechanism whose primary purpose is to prevent name clashes in non-trivial codebases. Of course, each solution has its own little twists and quirks which make sense in the context of a given language and would not make sense outside of it. The rest of this answer will deal with the twists and quirks specific to Clojure.
A Clojure namespace groups Vars, which are containers holding functions (most often), macro functions (functions used by the compiler to generate macroexpansions of appropriate forms, normally defined with defmacro; actually they are just regular Clojure functions, although there is some magic to the way in which they are registered with the compiler) and occasionally various "global parameters" (say, clojure.core/*in* for standard input), Atoms / Refs etc. The protocol facility introduced in Clojure 1.2 has the nice property that protocols are backed by Vars, as are the individual protocol functions; this is key to the way in which protocols present a solution to the expression problem (which is however probably out of the scope of this answer!).
It stands to reason that namespaces should group Vars which are somehow related. In general, creating a namespace is a quick & cheap operation, so it is perfectly fine (and indeed usual) to use a single namespace in early stages of development, then as independent chunks of functionality emerge, factor those out into their own namespaces, rinse & repeat... Only the things which are part of the public API need to be distributed between namespaces up front (or rather: prior to a stable release), since the fact that function such-and-such resides in namespace so-and-so is of course a part of the API.
and, more important, should they be used as objects in java (things that have data and functions and that try to achieve encapsulation) ? is this idea to far fetched ? :)
Normally, the answer is no. You might get a picture not too far from the truth if you approach them as classes with lots of static methods, no instance methods, no public constructors and often no state (though occasionally there may be some "class data members" in the form of Vars holding Atoms / Refs); but arguably it may be more useful not to try to apply Java-ish metaphors to Clojure idioms and to approach a namespace as a group of functions etc. and not "a class holding a group of functions" or some such thing.
There is an important exception to this general rule: namespaces which include :gen-class in their ns form. These are meant precisely to implement a Java class which may later be instantiated, which might have instance methods and per-instance state etc. Note that :gen-class is an interop feature -- pure Clojure code should generally avoid it.
or should they be used as packages in java ?
They serve some of the same purposes packages were designed to serve (as already mentioned above); the analogy, although it's certainly there, is not that useful, however, just because the things which packages group together (Java classes) are not at all like the things which Clojure namespaces group together (Clojure Vars), the various "access levels" (private / package / public in Java, {:private true} or not in Clojure) work very differently etc.
That being said, one has to remember that there is a certain correspondence between namespaces and packages / classes residing in particular packages. A namespace called foo.bar, when compiled, produces a class called bar in the package foo; this means, in particular, that namespace names should contain at least one dot, as so-called single-segment names apparently lead to classes being put in the "default package", leading to all sorts of weirdness. (E.g. I find it impossible to have VisualVM's profiler notice any functions defined in single-segment namespaces.)
Also, deftype / defrecord-created types do not reside in namespaces. A (defrecord Foo [...] ...) form in the file where namespace foo.bar is defined creates a class called Foo in the package foo.bar. To use the type Foo from another namespace, one would have to :import the class Foo from the foo.bar package -- :use / :require would not work, since they pull in Vars from namespaces, which records / types are not.
So, in this particular case, there is a certain correspondence between namespaces and packages which Clojure programmers who wish to take advantage of some of the newer language features need to be aware of. Some find that this gives an "interop flavour" to features which are not otherwise considered to belong in the realm of interop (defrecord / deftype / defprotocol are a good abstraction mechanism even if we forget about their role in achieving platform speed on the JVM) and it is certainly possible that in some future version of Clojure this flavour might be done away with, so that the namespace name / package name correspondence for deftype & Co. can be treated as an implementation detail.
or should they be used more generally as a module system or something ?
They are a module system and this is indeed how they should be used.
A package in Java has its own namespace, which provides a logical grouping of classes. It also helps prevent naming collisions. For example in java you will find java.util.Date and java.sql.Date - two different classes with the same name differentiated by their namespace. If you try an import both into a java file, you will see that it wont compile. At least one version will need to use its explicit namespace.
From a language independant view, namespaces are a way to isolate things (i.e. encapsulate in a sens). It's a more general concept (see xml namespaces for example). You can "create" namespaces in several ways, depending on the language you use: packages, static classes, modules and so on. All of these provides namespaces to the objects/data/functions they contain. This allow to organize the code better, to isolate features, tends for better code reuse and adaptability (as encapsulation)
As stated in the "Zen of Python", "Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those !".
Think of them as containers for your classes. As in if you had a helper class for building strings and you wanted it in your business layer you would use a namespace such as MyApp.Business.Helpers. This allows your classes to be contained in sensical locations so when you or some else referencing your code wants to cosume them they can be located easily. For another example if you wanted to consume a SQL connection helper class you would probably use something like:
MyApp.Data.SqlConnectionHelper sqlHelper = new MyApp.Data.SqlConnectionHelper();
In reality you would use a "using" statement so you wouldn't need to fully qualify the namespace just to declare the variable.
Paul

What are common conventions for using namespaces in Clojure?

I'm having trouble finding good advice and common practices for the use of namespaces in Clojure. I realize that namespaces are not the same as Java packages so I'm trying to tease out the conventions in Clojure, which seem surprisingly hard to determine.
I think I have a pretty good idea how to split functions into clj files and even roughly how I'd want to organize those files into directories. But beyond that I'm having trouble finding the mechanics for my dev environment. Some inter-related questions:
Do I use the same uniqueness conventions for Clojure namespaces as I would normally use for Java packages? [ie backwards-company-domain.project.subsystem]
Should I save my files in a directory structure that matches my namespaces? [ala Java]
If I have multiple namespaces, do I need to compile all of my code into a jar and add it to my classpath to make it accessible?
Should each namespace compile to one jar? Or should I create a single jar that contains clj code from many namespaces?
Thanks...
I guess it's ok if you think it helps, but many Clojure projects don't do so -- cf. Compojure (using a top-level compojure ns and various compojure.* ns's for specific functionality), Ring, Leiningen... Clojure itself uses clojure.* (and clojure.contrib.* for contrib libraries), but that's a special case, I suppose.
Yes! You absolutely must do so, or else Clojure won't be able to find your namespaces. Also note that you musn't use the underscore in namespace names or the hyphen in filenames and wherever you use a hyphen in a namespace name, you must use an underscore in the filename (so that the ns my.cool-project is defined in a file called cool_project.clj in a directory called my).
You need to make sure all your stuff is on the classpath, but it doesn't matter if it's in a jar, multiple jars, a mixture of jars and directories on the filesystem... As long as it obeys the correct naming conventions (your point no. 2) you should be fine.
However, do not compile things ahead-of-time if there's no particular reason to do so -- this may prevent your code from being portable across various versions of Clojure without providing any benefits besides a slightly improved loading time.
You'll still need to use AOT compilation sometimes, notably in some Java interop scenarios -- the documentation of the relevant functions / macros always mentions that. There are examples of things requiring AOT in clojure.contrib; I've never needed it, so I can't provide much in the way of details.
I'd say you should use jars for functional units of code. E.g. Compojure and Ring get packaged as single jars containing many namespaces which together compose the whole package. Also, clojure.contrib is notably packaged as a single jar with multiple unrelated libraries; but that again may be a special case.
On the other hand, a single jar containing all of your project's code together with its dependencies might occasionally be useful for deployment. Check out the Leiningen build tool and its 'uberjar' facility if you think that sort of thing may be useful to you.
Strictly speaking, not necessary, though many Java projects have dropped that convention as well, especially for internal projects or private APIs. Do avoid single-segment namespaces though, which would result in classfiles being generated in the default package.
Yes.
Regarding 3 & 4, packaging and AOT compilation are entirely orthogonal to the question of namespace conventions.

Handling properties in Scala

I'd like to know what is the most efficient way of handling properties in Scala. I'm tired of having gazillion property files, xml files and other type of configuration files in Java and wonder if there's "best practice" to handle those someway more efficient in Scala?
Why would you have a gazillion property files?
I'm still using the Apache commons Digester, which works perfectly well in Scala. It's basically a very easy way of making a user-defined XML document map to method calls on a user-defined configurator class. I find it extremely useful when I want to parse some configuration data (as opposed to application properties).
For application properties, you might either use a dependency injection framework (like Spring) or just plain old property files. I'd also be interested to see if Scala offers anything on top of this, though.
EDIT: Typesafe config gives you a simple and powerful solution for configuration - https://github.com/typesafehub/config
ORIGINAL (possibly not very useful):
Quoting from "Programming in Scala":
"In Scala, you can configure via Scala code itself."
Scala's runtime linking allows for classes to be swapped at runtime and the general philosophy of these languages tends to favour convention over configuration. If you don't want to deal with gazillion property files, just don't have them.
Check out Configgy which looks like a neat little library. It includes nesting and change-notification. It also include a logging library.
Unfortunately, it didn't compile for me on the Mac instances I tried. Let us know if you have better luck and what you think...
Update: solved Mac compilation problems. See this post.