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

Duplicated Code

Duplicated code can lead to software that is hard to understand and difficult to change. The Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle states:

Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system.

When you violate DRY, bugs and maintenance problems are sure to follow. Duplicated code has a tendency to both continue to replicate and also to diverge (leaving bugs as two similar implementations differ in subtle ways).

Tuning

This issue has a mass of 102.

We set useful threshold defaults for the languages we support but you may want to adjust these settings based on your project guidelines.

The threshold configuration represents the minimum mass a code block must have to be analyzed for duplication. The lower the threshold, the more fine-grained the comparison.

If the engine is too easily reporting duplication, try raising the threshold. If you suspect that the engine isn't catching enough duplication, try lowering the threshold. The best setting tends to differ from language to language.

See codeclimate-duplication's documentation for more information about tuning the mass threshold in your .codeclimate.yml.

Refactorings

• Extract Method
• Extract Class
• Form Template Method
• Introduce Null Object
• Pull Up Method
• Pull Up Field
• Substitute Algorithm

Further Reading

• Don't Repeat Yourself on the C2 Wiki
• Duplicated Code on SourceMaking
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler. Duplicated Code, p76

Duplicated Code

Duplicated code can lead to software that is hard to understand and difficult to change. The Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle states:

Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system.

When you violate DRY, bugs and maintenance problems are sure to follow. Duplicated code has a tendency to both continue to replicate and also to diverge (leaving bugs as two similar implementations differ in subtle ways).

Tuning

This issue has a mass of 102.

We set useful threshold defaults for the languages we support but you may want to adjust these settings based on your project guidelines.

The threshold configuration represents the minimum mass a code block must have to be analyzed for duplication. The lower the threshold, the more fine-grained the comparison.

If the engine is too easily reporting duplication, try raising the threshold. If you suspect that the engine isn't catching enough duplication, try lowering the threshold. The best setting tends to differ from language to language.

See codeclimate-duplication's documentation for more information about tuning the mass threshold in your .codeclimate.yml.

Refactorings

• Extract Method
• Extract Class
• Form Template Method
• Introduce Null Object
• Pull Up Method
• Pull Up Field
• Substitute Algorithm

Further Reading

• Don't Repeat Yourself on the C2 Wiki
• Duplicated Code on SourceMaking
• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler. Duplicated Code, p76

Rule: no-var-keyword

Disallows usage of the var keyword.

Use let or const instead.

Rationale

Declaring variables using var has several edge case behaviors that make var unsuitable for modern code. Variables declared by var have their parent function block as their scope, ignoring other control flow statements. vars have declaration "hoisting" (similar to functions) and can appear to be used before declaration.

Variables declared by const and let instead have as their scope the block in which they are defined, and are not allowed to used before declaration or be re-declared with another const or let.

Notes

• Has Fix

Config

Not configurable.

Examples

"no-var-keyword": true

For more information see this page.

Rule: prefer-const

Requires that variable declarations use const instead of let and var if possible.

If a variable is only assigned to once when it is declared, it should be declared using 'const'

Notes

• Has Fix

Config

An optional object containing the property "destructuring" with two possible values:

• "any" (default) - If any variable in destructuring can be const, this rule warns for those variables.
• "all" - Only warns if all variables in destructuring can be const.

Examples

"prefer-const": true

"prefer-const": true,[object Object]

Schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "destructuring": {
      "type": "string",
      "enum": [
        "all",
        "any"
      ]
    }
  }
}

For more information see this page.

Rule: whitespace

Enforces whitespace style conventions.

Rationale

Helps maintain a readable, consistent style in your codebase.

Notes

• Has Fix

Config

Several arguments may be optionally provided:

• "check-branch" checks branching statements (if/else/for/while) are followed by whitespace.
• "check-decl"checks that variable declarations have whitespace around the equals token.
• "check-operator" checks for whitespace around operator tokens.
• "check-module" checks for whitespace in import & export statements.
• "check-separator" checks for whitespace after separator tokens (,/;).
• "check-rest-spread" checks that there is no whitespace after rest/spread operator (...).
• "check-type" checks for whitespace before a variable type specification.
• "check-typecast" checks for whitespace between a typecast and its target.
• "check-type-operator" checks for whitespace between type operators | and &.
• "check-preblock" checks for whitespace before the opening brace of a block.
• "check-postbrace" checks for whitespace after an opening brace.

Examples

"whitespace": true,check-branch,check-operator,check-typecast

Schema

{
  "type": "array",
  "items": {
    "type": "string",
    "enum": [
      "check-branch",
      "check-decl",
      "check-operator",
      "check-module",
      "check-separator",
      "check-rest-spread",
      "check-type",
      "check-typecast",
      "check-type-operator",
      "check-preblock",
      "check-postbrace"
    ]
  },
  "minLength": 0,
  "maxLength": 11
}

For more information see this page.