CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2014/ch1b 32 sj

Refactoring Browsers in Popular IDEs

What are refactoring browsers?

Have you ever extracted a method by hand? To do so, you might pick out the code you want to extract into a separate method, type out a method declaration for it, copy-pastie the code, and tweak the parameters to get everything just right. What about renaming a method by hand, or copy-pasting a method or variable from one class to another?

Refactoring browsers greatly simplify the work of these and many other common types of refactoring operations by providing a graphical interface that programmers can interact with directly to perform these actions. Usually, this interface takes the form of a class browser, which lists out the members and methods of different classes.

A refactoring browser in a modern IDE (Netbeans).

Why should refactoring browsers be used?

Refactoring browsers should be used for several reasons:

1. They are faster and easier to use than keyboard-initiated refactoring operations.
2. They are safe - unless you make a mistake like moving a method to the wrong class, you are nearly guaranteed not to change the behavior of your program.<ref name="Smalltalk">"Refactoring Browser", Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc.. 10 April 2012. Retrieved 6 October 2014.</ref>
3. They allow you to bravely perform various logic organizing experiments, undoing those whose results aren't satisfactory.<ref name="Smalltalk">

Glossary

Class browser

A class browser is a feature of an integrated development environment (IDE) that allows the programmer to browse, navigate, or visualize the structure of object-oriented programming code.

Refactoring browser

A refactoring browser allows the programmer to use a graphical interface (usually a class browser) to manipulate, combine, and separate code elements.

Examples of Refactoring Browsers

Grails: http://grails.org/plugin/asset-pipeline

Sample Reference

<ref>"Ruby on Rails 3.1 Release Notes", Rails Guides. Retrieved 17 September 2014.</ref>

References

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