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

It's confusing to have a class member with the same name (case differences aside) as its enclosing class. This is particularly so when you consider the common practice of naming a class instance for the class itself.

Best practice dictates that any field or member with the same name as the enclosing class be renamed to be more descriptive of the particular aspect of the class it represents or holds.

Noncompliant Code Example

public class Foo {
  private String foo;

  public String getFoo() { }
}

Foo foo = new Foo();
foo.getFoo() // what does this return?

Compliant Solution

public class Foo {
  private String name;

  public String getName() { }
}

//...

Foo foo = new Foo();
foo.getName()

Exceptions

When the type of the field is the containing class and that field is static, no issue is raised to allow singletons named like the type.

public class Foo {
  ...
  private static Foo foo;
  public Foo getInstance() {
    if(foo==null) {
      foo = new Foo();
    }
    return foo;
  }
  ...
}

Programmers should not comment out code as it bloats programs and reduces readability.

Unused code should be deleted and can be retrieved from source control history if required.

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 70.

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 70.

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 52.

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 52.

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

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks that there are no import statements that use the * notation.

Rationale: Importing all classes from a package or staticmembers from a class leads to tight coupling between packagesor classes and might lead to problems when a new version of alibrary introduces name clashes.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks that method parameter names conform to a specified pattern.By using accessModifiers property it is possibleto specify different formats for methods at different visibility levels.

To validate catch parameters please useCatchParameterName.

To validate lambda parameters please useLambdaParameterName.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks that there are no import statements that use the * notation.

Rationale: Importing all classes from a package or staticmembers from a class leads to tight coupling between packagesor classes and might lead to problems when a new version of alibrary introduces name clashes.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks that method parameter names conform to a specified pattern.By using accessModifiers property it is possibleto specify different formats for methods at different visibility levels.

To validate catch parameters please useCatchParameterName.

To validate lambda parameters please useLambdaParameterName.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks that the groups of import declarations appear in the order specifiedby the user. If there is an import but its group is not specified in theconfiguration such an import should be placed at the end of the import list.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks that method parameter names conform to a specified pattern.By using accessModifiers property it is possibleto specify different formats for methods at different visibility levels.

To validate catch parameters please useCatchParameterName.

To validate lambda parameters please useLambdaParameterName.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks that the groups of import declarations appear in the order specifiedby the user. If there is an import but its group is not specified in theconfiguration such an import should be placed at the end of the import list.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks that method parameter names conform to a specified pattern.By using accessModifiers property it is possibleto specify different formats for methods at different visibility levels.

To validate catch parameters please useCatchParameterName.

To validate lambda parameters please useLambdaParameterName.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks for long lines.

Rationale: Long lines are hard to read in printouts or if developershave limited screen space for the source code, e.g. if the IDEdisplays additional information like project tree, class hierarchy,etc.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.

Checks that overloaded methods are grouped together. Overloaded methods have the samename but different signatures where the signature can differ by the number of inputparameters or type of input parameters or both.

This documentation is written and maintained by the Checkstyle community and is covered under the same license as the Checkstyle project.