Keeping the Code Clean

Like this article? We recommend

Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices

Learn More Buy

Like this article? We recommend

Like this article? We recommend 

Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices

Learn More Buy

Now We Need a Helper

Now we have a decision to make. How do we test that the customer can be converted to XML? Should Customer have a method like toXML? Or should we have a helper class do the job? The Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) tells us that a class should have one and only one reason to change. If we put XML stuff into the Customer class, then Customer will have two reasons to change:

• Any business rules or content having to do with Customer itself

• Any changes to the XML schema or XML libraries

So we make the decision to use a helper class instead of a method of Customer.

We write a new line of code into the test to express our decision:

public void testToXML() throws Exception
{
  Customer c = new Customer();
  c.name = "John Smith";
  c.address = "55 Somewhere, City, State Zip";
  c.email = "jsmith@somewhere.com";
  c.phone = "111-222-3333";
  c.fax = "444-555-6666";
  c.cellPhone = "777-888-9999";

  Element e = CustomerXMLConverter.toXML(c);
}

This doesn't compile. So we write the simplest code that will make it compile:

public class CustomerXMLConverter
{
  public static Element toXML(Customer c)
  {
    return null;
  }
}

The test compiles and runs, so it's time to make it actually test something. We add a clause to the test to check that the name was properly added to the XML:

public void testToXML() throws Exception
{
  Customer c = new Customer();
  c.name = "John Smith";
  c.address = "55 Somewhere, City, State Zip";
  c.email = "jsmith@somewhere.com";
  c.phone = "111-222-3333";
  c.fax = "444-555-6666";
  c.cellPhone = "777-888-9999";

  Element e = CustomerXMLConverter.toXML(c);
  assertEquals("John Smith", e.getChild("name").getTextTrim());
}

This compiles, but fails with a NullPointerException because toXML is returning null. So we have to make toXML actually do something:

public static Element toXML(Customer c)
{
  Element customer = new Element("customer");
  return customer;
}

Hmm. As I wrote that line of code, I realized that I don't have a test for it. I should add something to the test that makes sure that the name of the customer element is, in fact, customer.

Element e = CustomerXMLConverter.toXML(c);
assertEquals("customer", e.getName());
assertEquals("John Smith", e.getChild("name").getTextTrim());

This compiles and fails on the "John Smith" test, so apparently the customer element is properly named. Now let's get whole test to pass.

public static Element toXML(Customer c)
{
  Element customer = new Element("customer");
  customer.addContent(new Element("name").setText(c.name));
  return customer;
}