Constants should be together to find them easily

TL;DR: Don't define too many unrelated constants in the same class. Don't pile up the junk together.

Problems

• Bad Cohesion

• High Coupling

• Magic Numbers

• Single Responsibility principle violation

Solutions

1. Break the contents following Real World responsibilities using the MAPPER.

Context

This is a special case of a God Object restricted only to constant definitions.

The repository can be a class, file, or JSON.

Sample Code

Wrong

public static class GlobalConstants
{
    public const int MaxPlayers = 10;
    public const string DefaultLanguage = "en-US";
    public const double Pi = 3.14159; 
}

Right

public static class MaxPlayersConstants
{
    public const int MaxPlayers = 10;    
}

public static class DefaultLanguageConstants
{
    public const string DefaultLanguage = "en-US";
}

public static class MathConstants
{
    public const double Pi = 3.14159;
}

Detection

[X] Semi-Automatic

We can tell our linters to warn us of too many constants' definitions against a preset threshold.

Tags

• Coupling

Conclusion

Finding correct responsibilities is one of our primary tasks when designing software.

Relations

https://maximilianocontieri.com/code-smell-14-god-objects

https://maximilianocontieri.com/code-smell-29-settingsconfigs

https://maximilianocontieri.com/code-smell-02-constants-and-magic-numbers

More Info

Medium

Disclaimer

Code Smells are my opinion.

Credits

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

If someone says their code was broken for a couple of days while they are refactoring, you can be pretty sure they were not refactoring.

Martin Fowler

https://maximilianocontieri.com/software-engineering-great-quotes

This article is part of the CodeSmell Series.

https://maximilianocontieri.com/how-to-find-the-stinky-parts-of-your-code