Skip to main content

Code Review: Class Comments

Let's talk in this post about code comments, around the following example.
    /// <summary>
    /// ... summary comments ...
    /// Note: If you change environment make sure you clear this file,as it will contain cached configuration
    /// </summary>
    public class ConfigurationPersister
    {        
        public T GetConfiguration<T>() { ... }        
        public void PersistConfiguration<T>(T configuration) { ... }
        internal bool HasConfiguration<T>() { ... }        
        private string CreateConfigFileName(string fileName) { ... }        
        private void CheckConfigDirectory() { ... }        
    }

Tags
First thing that we might notify is the 'NOTE' part. For this kind of scenarios we should use custom tags like '<remarks>'. In this way the other developer that is using the ConfigurationPersister (class), can see more clearly any remarks.
    /// <summary>
    /// ... summary comments ...
    /// <summary>
    /// <remarks>If you change environment make sure you clear this file,as it will contain cached configuration
    /// </remarks>
    public class ConfigurationPersister
    {        
        public T GetConfiguration<T>() { ... }        
        public void PersistConfiguration<T>(T configuration) { ... }
        internal bool HasConfiguration<T>() { ... }        
        private string CreateConfigFileName(string fileName) { ... }        
        private void CheckConfigDirectory() { ... }        
    }

In the summary, you should add only the content that is relevant. We should try to use other types of tags like '<remarks>' or '<see>', based on what kind of content we want to add there.

Location
The second thing that we notify is related what kind of information is specified in '<remarks>' tag. The comment specify that we should clean the content of the file if we change the environment. For the person that will use the application how does this information will be relevant?
Once you compile the code the comments are not relevant anymore for end user. The end user cannot see any kind of code comments.

Taking this into consideration, this comment should be added in a location where the end user can access it. In this case, this comment should be added inside the file where configuration is stored.
If the configuration file is generated dynamically,  we should push the comment from our code to the config. file.
<!--If you change environment make sure you clear this file,as it will contain cached configuration-->
<configuration>
  <ip>158.541.245.124</ip>
  <port>443</port>
</configuration>

Message

The last thing related to the message that is transmitted by the comment. A end user might not understand what does clear file means. It might be deleting the file, remove all content, remove a specific content from file.For end user it might not be clear what does change environment means.
It is recommended to provide clear information and try to define as clear as possible all actions. If you have at application level a glossary that defines clearly what each term or action means, that we are okay.

Conclusion
Before adding a comment try to:

  • See what is the real value of the comment
  • Why you need to add it 
  • Does the person that will read the comment will understand it
  • It is the right location (a message for end-user should never be added as code comment)

Comments

  1. If the configuration file is generated dynamically, we should push the comment from our code to the config. file.https://www.avaza.com

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Windows Docker Containers can make WIN32 API calls, use COM and ASP.NET WebForms

After the last post , I received two interesting questions related to Docker and Windows. People were interested if we do Win32 API calls from a Docker container and if there is support for COM. WIN32 Support To test calls to WIN32 API, let’s try to populate SYSTEM_INFO class. [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)] public struct SYSTEM_INFO { public uint dwOemId; public uint dwPageSize; public uint lpMinimumApplicationAddress; public uint lpMaximumApplicationAddress; public uint dwActiveProcessorMask; public uint dwNumberOfProcessors; public uint dwProcessorType; public uint dwAllocationGranularity; public uint dwProcessorLevel; public uint dwProcessorRevision; } ... [DllImport("kernel32")] static extern void GetSystemInfo(ref SYSTEM_INFO pSI); ... SYSTEM_INFO pSI = new SYSTEM_INFO(

Azure AD and AWS Cognito side-by-side

In the last few weeks, I was involved in multiple opportunities on Microsoft Azure and Amazon, where we had to analyse AWS Cognito, Azure AD and other solutions that are available on the market. I decided to consolidate in one post all features and differences that I identified for both of them that we should need to take into account. Take into account that Azure AD is an identity and access management services well integrated with Microsoft stack. In comparison, AWS Cognito is just a user sign-up, sign-in and access control and nothing more. The focus is not on the main features, is more on small things that can make a difference when you want to decide where we want to store and manage our users.  This information might be useful in the future when we need to decide where we want to keep and manage our users.  Feature Azure AD (B2C, B2C) AWS Cognito Access token lifetime Default 1h – the value is configurable 1h – cannot be modified

What to do when you hit the throughput limits of Azure Storage (Blobs)

In this post we will talk about how we can detect when we hit a throughput limit of Azure Storage and what we can do in that moment. Context If we take a look on Scalability Targets of Azure Storage ( https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-scalability-targets/ ) we will observe that the limits are prety high. But, based on our business logic we can end up at this limits. If you create a system that is hitted by a high number of device, you can hit easily the total number of requests rate that can be done on a Storage Account. This limits on Azure is 20.000 IOPS (entities or messages per second) where (and this is very important) the size of the request is 1KB. Normally, if you make a load tests where 20.000 clients will hit different blobs storages from the same Azure Storage Account, this limits can be reached. How we can detect this problem? From client, we can detect that this limits was reached based on the HTTP error code that is returned by HTTP