georgebellos/real_estate

Classes and modules are the units of reuse and release. It is therefore considered good practice to annotate every class and module with a brief comment outlining its responsibilities.

Example

Given

class Dummy
  # Do things...
end

Reek would emit the following warning:

test.rb -- 1 warning:
  [1]:Dummy has no descriptive comment (IrresponsibleModule)

Fixing this is simple - just an explaining comment:

# The Dummy class is responsible for ...
class Dummy
  # Do things...
end

Classes should not assume that instance variables are set or present outside of the current class definition.

Good:

class Foo
  def initialize
    @bar = :foo
  end

  def foo?
    @bar == :foo
  end
end

Good as well:

class Foo
  def foo?
    bar == :foo
  end

  def bar
    @bar ||= :foo
  end
end

Bad:

class Foo
  def go_foo!
    @bar = :foo
  end

  def foo?
    @bar == :foo
  end
end

Example

Running Reek on:

class Dummy
  def test
    @ivar
  end
end

would report:

[1]:InstanceVariableAssumption: Dummy assumes too much for instance variable @ivar

Note that this example would trigger this smell warning as well:

class Parent
  def initialize(omg)
    @omg = omg
  end
end

class Child < Parent
  def foo
    @omg
  end
end

The way to address the smell warning is that you should create an attr_reader to use @omg in the subclass and not access @omg directly like this:

class Parent
  attr_reader :omg

  def initialize(omg)
    @omg = omg
  end
end

class Child < Parent
  def foo
    omg
  end
end

Directly accessing instance variables is considered a smell because it breaks encapsulation and makes it harder to reason about code.

If you don't want to expose those methods as public API just make them private like this:

class Parent
  def initialize(omg)
    @omg = omg
  end

  private
  attr_reader :omg
end

class Child < Parent
  def foo
    omg
  end
end

Current Support in Reek

An instance variable must:

• be set in the constructor
• or be accessed through a method with lazy initialization / memoization.

If not, Instance Variable Assumption will be reported.

This cop checks for whitespace within string interpolations.

Example: EnforcedStyle: no_space (default)

# bad
   var = "This is the #{ space } example"

# good
   var = "This is the #{no_space} example"

Example: EnforcedStyle: space

# bad
   var = "This is the #{no_space} example"

# good
   var = "This is the #{ space } example"

This cop checks for whitespace within string interpolations.

Example: EnforcedStyle: no_space (default)

# bad
   var = "This is the #{ space } example"

# good
   var = "This is the #{no_space} example"

Example: EnforcedStyle: space

# bad
   var = "This is the #{no_space} example"

# good
   var = "This is the #{ space } example"

This cop checks for missing top-level documentation of classes and modules. Classes with no body are exempt from the check and so are namespace modules - modules that have nothing in their bodies except classes, other modules, or constant definitions.

The documentation requirement is annulled if the class or module has a "#:nodoc:" comment next to it. Likewise, "#:nodoc: all" does the same for all its children.

Example:

# bad
class Person
  # ...
end

# good
# Description/Explanation of Person class
class Person
  # ...
end

Here we check if the parameters on a multi-line method call or definition are aligned.

Example: EnforcedStyle: withfirstparameter (default)

# good

foo :bar,
    :baz

# bad

foo :bar,
  :baz

Example: EnforcedStyle: withfixedindentation

# good

foo :bar,
  :baz

# bad

foo :bar,
    :baz

This cops checks for indentation that doesn't use the specified number of spaces.

See also the IndentationConsistency cop which is the companion to this one.

Example:

# bad
class A
 def test
  puts 'hello'
 end
end

# good
class A
  def test
    puts 'hello'
  end
end

Example: IgnoredPatterns: ['^\s*module']

# bad
module A
class B
  def test
  puts 'hello'
  end
end
end

# good
module A
class B
  def test
    puts 'hello'
  end
end
end

Here we check if the parameters on a multi-line method call or definition are aligned.

Example: EnforcedStyle: withfirstparameter (default)

# good

foo :bar,
    :baz

# bad

foo :bar,
  :baz

Example: EnforcedStyle: withfixedindentation

# good

foo :bar,
  :baz

# bad

foo :bar,
    :baz

This cop checks for whitespace within string interpolations.

Example: EnforcedStyle: no_space (default)

# bad
   var = "This is the #{ space } example"

# good
   var = "This is the #{no_space} example"

Example: EnforcedStyle: space

# bad
   var = "This is the #{no_space} example"

# good
   var = "This is the #{ space } example"

This cop checks for whitespace within string interpolations.

Example: EnforcedStyle: no_space (default)

# bad
   var = "This is the #{ space } example"

# good
   var = "This is the #{no_space} example"

Example: EnforcedStyle: space

# bad
   var = "This is the #{no_space} example"

# good
   var = "This is the #{ space } example"