Instant Refactoring
I normally spend all day working in Eclipse writing Java source.

I quite like Eclipse's "Refactoring Browser" and use it a lot, one of my colleagues was surprised to discover what it does when I was demonstrating the "extract method" action.

Tonight I was working on some Blogger API related code in solely as mental exercise (there are several APIs already floating about), and I was satisfied when wrapping up the code at the length of the methods that I had been writing.

One of the tenets of Smalltalk, is developing small methods that can be combined into larger functional bodies, with a good refactoring browser, you can work the opposite way, develop logical code, and then refactor quickly into easy to maintain code...

paramNode: aValue typeString: aType
    "Generate a <param> node for the XML-RPC Call, requires a value and 
     a type for that value. e.g. 

     paramNode: 'kevin' typeString: 'string' should return

     <param><value><string>kevin</string></value><param>"

 | paramNode |

 paramNode := XML.Element tag: 'param'.
 paramNode addNode: ((XML.Element tag: 'value') 
                            addNode: ((XML.Element tag: aType) 
                            addNode: (XML.Text text: aValue))).

 ^paramNode

This makes the following call easy...

paramNodes
 "Generate the XML-RPC <params><param/></params> block"

 | paramNodes |
 paramNodes := XML.Element tag: 'params'.

 paramNodes addNode: (self paramNode: (self appKey) typeString: 'string').
 paramNodes addNode: (self paramNode: (self username) typeString: 'string').
 paramNodes addNode: (self paramNode: (self password) typeString: 'string').

 ^paramNodes

- posted by bigkevmcd @ 2:21 PM