Refactorings

University of Nantes – LS2N, France

https://sunye-g.univ-nantes.io

Gerson Sunyé gerson.sunye@univ-nantes.fr

Preamble

Figure 1. Where are we?

Plan

Introduction
Refactoring Operations
When to Refactor
Why Refactor
- Refactor to Improve Extensibility
- Refactor to Improve Maintainability
Integrate Refactoring to Software Development Process
Automatization
Conclusion

Software Evolution Ideas

Software is never finished.
Software maintenance is just continuous development.
Consequence: code becomes complex and brittle

Why?

Original design is always inadequate.
Even good designers cannot:
- get right the first time.
- predict how the software will evolve.
- understand correctly the problem domain and user requirements.

Software Evolution Basis

— Grow, don’t build software.

Evolutionary Software Development
— Fred Brooks

Evolutionary Software Development

Prototyping
Evolution
Consolidation

Software Prototyping

Solidifies user requirements
Sketches the initial software design

Software Evolution

Adds new functionalities.
Determines expansion points (hot-spots).

Software Consolidation

Improves Design:

Corrects defects
Introduces new abstractions

Software Refactoring Definition

A program transformation that preserves the visible behavior.

The activity of improving the design of a software source code.

Simple example

Class rename

From:

public class Stuff {
    // (...)
}

To:

public class ConfigurationManager {
    // (...)
}

Another Example

Insert intermediate class

From:

public class Root {}

public class ConcreteA extends Root {}

public class ConcreteB extends Root {}

To:

public class Root {}

public class IntermediateClass extends Root {}

public class ConcreteA extends IntermediateClass {}

public class ConcreteB extends IntermediateClass {}

A More Complex Example

Figure 2. The Matrix Class before Refactoring

Figure 3. The Matrix Class after Refactoring

Origins

Software maintenance and evolution
Software application development
Software framework development

Motivation

The eternal quest for code uniqueness
The code is read and modified more often than it is written

Difficulties

Understand an existing design is hard
Modify an existing design is even harder
Code changes may introduce errors, defeating the propose.
Results are not visible.

Difficulties (Cont.)

Every software project is under time pressure.
Developers are paid to add new features.
Refactoring can be very expensive.

Code Evolution Without Refactoring

Design becomes more corrupt and code becomes more brittle.
Changes become more expensive and more frequent and are made quickly and poorly.

Refactoring During Software Construction

Gradually change the code to get a healthy design.
Design is done continuously.
By building the system, we discover how to improve it.

Plan

Introduction
Refactoring Operations
When to Refactor
Why Refactor
- Refactor to Improve Extensibility
- Refactor to Improve Maintainability
Integrate Refactoring to Software Development Process
Automatization
Conclusion

Refactoring Operations

Simple source-to-source transformation with no visual effect.
Since refactoring operations are behavior-preserving, they can be composed and still preserve behavior.
Learning refactoring operations is similar to learning simple arithmetics.

Operation Preconditions

Each refactoring operation has a set of preconditions
That is, the conditions that one should respect to perform the transformation

For instance:

The precondition to the operation remove attribute is that the attribute is not used.

Basic Operations

Add entity
Remove entity
Rename entity
Move entity
Intra-method
Composite operations

Add Entity

Add an attribute (instance or class level)
Add a class
Add a method (instance or class level)

Remove Entity

Remove an attribute (instance or class level)
Remove a class
Remove a method (instance or class level)

public class Example {
    private String name;

    public neverUsedMethod() {
        doNothing();
    }
}

Rename Entity

Rename a variable
Rename an attribute (instance or class level)
Rename a class
Rename a method (instance or class level)
Change a method signature:
- rename, permute, add, or remove arguments.

public class Example {
    private String maeby;

    public myMethod() {
        String maybe;

        this.call(maeby, me);
    }

    public call(String one, String other) {
        doSomething();
    }
}

Push-down (Specialization) or Pull-up (Generalization) property

Attribute push-down or pull-up (instance or class level).
Method push-down or pull-up (instance or class level).

Move Property

Move attribute or method to another class

Intra-Method

Extract code as method
Extract code as temporary variable
Inline method
Inline temporary variable

Before

int increment(int i) {
    return i+1;
}
void m() {
    int a;
    a = increment(a);
}

Inline increment()

void m() {
    int a;
    a = a + 1;
}

Composite Operations

Encapsulate attribute
Make attribute read-only
Extract interface from class
Extract inner class
Create template method

Before

class A {
    public int code;
}

Encapsulate Code

class A {
    private int code;
    public int getCode() {return code;}
    public void setCode(int i) {code = i;}
}

Other Operations

Change entity visibility
Introduce factory method
Convert variable to attribute

Before

class A {
    public A(int i, String s, float f) {}
}

Introduce Factory Method

class A {
    private A(int i, String s, float f) {}

    public static createA(int i, String s, float f) {
        return new A(i, s, f);
    }
}

Plan

Introduction
Refactoring Operations
When to Refactor
Why Refactor
- Refactor to Improve Extensibility
- Refactor to Improve Maintainability
Integrate Refactoring to Software Development Process
Automatization
Conclusion

When to Refactor

Strategies During Software Evolution:

Extend and then refactor
Refactor to extend
Debug and then refactor
Refactor to debug
Refactor to understand

Extend and then Refactor

When you need to add a new functionality:

Find a class or method with similar behavior and copy it
Make it work
Eliminate redundancy

Refactor to Extend

A functionality seems too complex to implement:

Refactor the current design to make the change easy
Make the change

Debug and then Refactor

Locate and fix the bug

Refactor the code to make the bug obvious:

Add assertions
Extract method
Assign meaningful names
Create explaining constants for magic numbers
Create explaining constants or variables for complex expressions

Refactor to Debug

Since refactor operations are behavior-preserving, they also preserve bad behavior.

Before debugging, refactor to simplify complex code
Then, debug it

Refactor to Understand

Refactor when trying to understand a complex code:

Split large methods
Create explaining constants or variables for magic numbers
Assign meaningful names
Do not worry about performance

Plan

Introduction
Refactoring Operations
When to Refactor
Why Refactor
- Refactor to Improve Extensibility
- Refactor to Improve Maintainability
Integrate Refactoring to Software Development Process
Automatization
Conclusion

Refactor for Extensibility

Strategy:

Refactor code before code extension
Separate things that change from things that do not.
Apply design patterns.

Design Patterns

Variability point	Design Pattern
Algorithms	Strategy, Visitor
Actions	Command
Implementation	Bridge
Response to change	Observer
Interactions between objects	Mediator

Variability point

Design Pattern

Algorithms

Strategy, Visitor

Actions

Command

Implementation

Bridge

Response to change

Observer

Interactions between objects

Mediator

Variability point	Design Pattern
Object being created	Factory Method, Abstract Factory, Prototype
Structure being created	Builder
Traversal Algorithm	Iterator
Object Interfaces	Adapter
Object Behavior	Decorator, State

Variability point

Design Pattern

Object being created

Factory Method, Abstract Factory, Prototype

Structure being created

Builder

Traversal Algorithm

Iterator

Object Interfaces

Adapter

Object Behavior

Decorator, State

Example: Introduce Algorithm Variability

public class Client {
    public void writeAsciiOn(OutputStream o) {
        o.print("name: ");
        o.print(this.name);
        (...)}
    }

Suppose that we want to print in HTML, XML, JSON, etc.

Steps

Create AsciiStrategy class
Add instance attribute to class Client and initialize it to AsciiStrategy
Move method writeAsciiOn() to class AsciiStrategy
Rename method writeAsciiOn() to writeOn()

Result

public class Client {
    private WriteStrategy writeStrategy = new AsciiStrategy();
    public void writeOn(OutputStream o) {
        writeStrategy.writeOn(this, o)}
}

public class AsciiStrategy {
    public void writeOn(Client c, OutputStream o)
        o.print("name: ");
        o.print(c.name);
        (...)}
}

Consequences

The printing behavior was extracted from the class Client.
Adding new printing behavior could be easily achieved.

Plan

Introduction
Refactoring Operations
When to Refactor
Why Refactor
- Refactor to Improve Extensibility
- Refactor to Improve Maintainability
Integrate Refactoring to Software Development Process
Automatization
Conclusion

Refactor to Improve Code Maintainability

Strategy:

Use Code Smells to find where the code should be improved

Code Smells

Long Method
Large Class
Long Parameter List
Nested Conditionals
Parallel Inheritance Hierarchies
Duplicated Code
Speculative Generality

Long Method

Fix

Extract code snippets as smaller methods:
- If an entire method is long and low-level, find the sequence of higher-level steps.
- Comments in the middle of a method often point out good places to extract.
Smaller methods can often be reused

Large Class

Fix

Create compositions of smaller classes
Find logical sub-components of the original class and create classes to represent them
Move methods and attributes into the new components
Related refactoring operations: Extract Class, Extract Subclass

Long Parameter List

Fix

Create a class containing all interrelated parameters.
Use this class as a parameter
Find methods that should be in the new class

Nested Conditionals

Fix

If the conditional expression involves type test (isKindOf(), type(), getClass(), etc.), put the method on that class.
If the expression involves null objects (isEmpty(), isNull(), null, empty()), consider the Null Object pattern.

Parallel Inheritance Hierarchies

Fix

Use Move Method and Move Attribute to combine the hierarchies into one.

Duplicated Code

Fix

Push-up identical methods to common superclass
Push-up the more general method
Move the method into a common component (e.g., Strategy)
Related refactoring operations: Extract Method, PullUp Method, Form Template Method

Speculative Generality

Fix

Remove unnecessary delegation with Inline Class
Remove (almost) empty abstract classes
Remove unused parameters
Methods named with odd abstract names should be brought down to earth with Rename Method

Plan

Introduction
Refactoring Operations
When to Refactor
Why Refactor
- Refactor to Improve Extensibility
- Refactor to Improve Maintainability
Integrate Refactoring to Software Development Process
Automatization
Conclusion

The Loan Metaphor

Quick and dirty coding is like taking out a loan
Living with bad code is the interest
Debt is necessary for a business
Too much debt is not healthy and will eventually catch up to you

Refactoring Phase

Refactor after a code release:

Little more breathing room
The design is still fresh in your mind

Agile Software Development

Listen
Test
Code
Refactor Continually

Agile Software Development (Cont.)

Some of the principles still apply, even if you’re not extreme
Whenever something seems difficult or awkward, refactor to make it easy
Let the program tell you where it needs to be fixed
If you cut and paste, you must refactor

Plan

Introduction
Refactoring Operations
When to Refactor
Why Refactor
- Refactor to Improve Extensibility
- Refactor to Improve Maintainability
Integrate Refactoring to Software Development Process
Automatization
Conclusion

Using Standard Tools

Safe refactoring needs tests
Tests must pass before and after each refactoring operation.
Use standard testing tools: JUnit, TestNG, etc.
Current Java IDE provide refactoring operations: Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ IDEA

Refactoring Tools

Smalltalk: Refactoring Browser, Lint.
Python: Bicycle Repair Man, pycheck.
Java: Eclipse, IntelliJ Idea, JFactor, XRefactory, JBuilder, RefactorIt, JRefactory, Transmogrify, JafaRefactor, CodeGuide, jLint.
C++: SlickEdit, Ref++, Xrefactory.
Ruby: Ruby Refactoring

Plan

Introduction
Refactoring Operations
When to Refactor
Why Refactor
Refactor to Improve Extensibility
Refactor to Improve Maintainability
Integrate Refactoring to Software Development Process
Automatization
Conclusion

Conclusion

Evolutionary Software Development
Refactoring operations
Ways of integrating refactoring into your process

References

PhD Thesis from William Opdyke, Don Roberts, and John Brant.
Martin Fowler’s book and website
eXtreme Programming
Source Making
Coding Horror Blog
Refactoring Guru

Credits

Several slides and examples are based on a John Brant and Don Roberts presentation "Refactoring Techniques and Tools" at Smalltalk Solutions '99.