Cognitive Complexity

Cognitive Complexity is a measure of how difficult a unit of code is to intuitively understand. Unlike Cyclomatic Complexity, which determines how difficult your code will be to test, Cognitive Complexity tells you how difficult your code will be to read and comprehend.

A method's cognitive complexity is based on a few simple rules:

• Code is not considered more complex when it uses shorthand that the language provides for collapsing multiple statements into one
• Code is considered more complex for each "break in the linear flow of the code"
• Code is considered more complex when "flow breaking structures are nested"

Further reading

• Cognitive Complexity docs
• Cognitive Complexity: A new way of measuring understandability

Cognitive Complexity

Cognitive Complexity is a measure of how difficult a unit of code is to intuitively understand. Unlike Cyclomatic Complexity, which determines how difficult your code will be to test, Cognitive Complexity tells you how difficult your code will be to read and comprehend.

A method's cognitive complexity is based on a few simple rules:

• Code is not considered more complex when it uses shorthand that the language provides for collapsing multiple statements into one
• Code is considered more complex for each "break in the linear flow of the code"
• Code is considered more complex when "flow breaking structures are nested"

Further reading

• Cognitive Complexity docs
• Cognitive Complexity: A new way of measuring understandability

Cognitive Complexity

Cognitive Complexity is a measure of how difficult a unit of code is to intuitively understand. Unlike Cyclomatic Complexity, which determines how difficult your code will be to test, Cognitive Complexity tells you how difficult your code will be to read and comprehend.

A method's cognitive complexity is based on a few simple rules:

• Code is not considered more complex when it uses shorthand that the language provides for collapsing multiple statements into one
• Code is considered more complex for each "break in the linear flow of the code"
• Code is considered more complex when "flow breaking structures are nested"

Further reading

• Cognitive Complexity docs
• Cognitive Complexity: A new way of measuring understandability

Cognitive Complexity is a measure of how hard the control flow of a method is to understand. Methods with high Cognitive Complexity will be difficult to maintain.

See

• Cognitive Complexity

Fields in a Serializable class must themselves be either Serializable or transient even if the class is never explicitly serialized or deserialized. For instance, under load, most J2EE application frameworks flush objects to disk, and an allegedly Serializable object with non-transient, non-serializable data members could cause program crashes, and open the door to attackers. In general a Serializable class is expected to fulfil its contract and not have an unexpected behaviour when an instance is serialized.

This rule raises an issue on non-Serializable fields, and on collection fields when they are not private (because they could be assigned non-Serializable values externally), and when they are assigned non-Serializable types within the class.

Noncompliant Code Example

public class Address {
  //...
}

public class Person implements Serializable {
  private static final long serialVersionUID = 1905122041950251207L;

  private String name;
  private Address address;  // Noncompliant; Address isn't serializable
}

Compliant Solution

public class Address implements Serializable {
  private static final long serialVersionUID = 2405172041950251807L;
}

public class Person implements Serializable {
  private static final long serialVersionUID = 1905122041950251207L;

  private String name;
  private Address address;
}

Exceptions

The alternative to making all members serializable or transient is to implement special methods which take on the responsibility of properly serializing and de-serializing the object. This rule ignores classes which implement the following methods:

 private void writeObject(java.io.ObjectOutputStream out)
     throws IOException
 private void readObject(java.io.ObjectInputStream in)
     throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException;

See

• MITRE, CWE-594 - Saving Unserializable Objects to Disk
• Oracle Java 6, Serializable
• Oracle Java 7, Serializable

There are several reasons for a method not to have a method body:

• It is an unintentional omission, and should be fixed to prevent an unexpected behavior in production.
• It is not yet, or never will be, supported. In this case an UnsupportedOperationException should be thrown.
• The method is an intentionally-blank override. In this case a nested comment should explain the reason for the blank override.

Noncompliant Code Example

public void doSomething() {
}

public void doSomethingElse() {
}

Compliant Solution

@Override
public void doSomething() {
  // Do nothing because of X and Y.
}

@Override
public void doSomethingElse() {
  throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}

Exceptions

Default (no-argument) constructors are ignored when there are other constructors in the class, as are empty methods in abstract classes.

public abstract class Animal {
  void speak() {  // default implementation ignored
  }
}

There are several reasons for a method not to have a method body:

• It is an unintentional omission, and should be fixed to prevent an unexpected behavior in production.
• It is not yet, or never will be, supported. In this case an UnsupportedOperationException should be thrown.
• The method is an intentionally-blank override. In this case a nested comment should explain the reason for the blank override.

Noncompliant Code Example

public void doSomething() {
}

public void doSomethingElse() {
}

Compliant Solution

@Override
public void doSomething() {
  // Do nothing because of X and Y.
}

@Override
public void doSomethingElse() {
  throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}

Exceptions

Default (no-argument) constructors are ignored when there are other constructors in the class, as are empty methods in abstract classes.

public abstract class Animal {
  void speak() {  // default implementation ignored
  }
}