This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Tell, Don't Ask
We have objects sending each other messages, so what do they say? Our experience is that the calling object should describe what it wants in terms of the role that its neighbor plays, and let the called object decide how to make that happen. This is commonly known as the "Tell, Don't Ask" style or, more formally, the Law of Demeter. Objects make their decisions based only on the information they hold internally or that which came with the triggering message; they avoid navigating to other objects to make things happen. Followed consistently, this style produces more flexible code because it's easy to swap objects that play the same role. The caller sees nothing of their internal structure or the structure of the rest of the system behind the role interface.
When we don't follow the style, we can end up with what's known as "train wreck" code, where a series of getters is chained together like the carriages in a train. Here's one case we found on the Internet:
((EditSaveCustomizer) master.getModelisable()
.getDockablePanel()
.getCustomizer())
.getSaveItem().setEnabled(Boolean.FALSE.booleanValue());
After some head scratching, we realized what this fragment was meant to say:
master.allowSavingOfCustomisations();
This wraps all that implementation detail up behind a single call. The client of master no longer needs to know anything about the types in the chain. We've reduced the risk that a design change might cause ripples in remote parts of the codebase.
As well as hiding information, there's a more subtle benefit from "Tell, Don't Ask." It forces us to make explicit and so name the interactions between objects, rather than leaving them implicit in the chain of getters. The shorter version above is much clearer about what it's for, not just how it happens to be implemented.