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OO Design - shortening a long list of methods

I have a simple application that loads data from an XML file into a database.

public class EmployeeLoader()  
{ 
   public void LoadEmpoyees()
   {...}

   public void LoadSalaries()
   {...}

   public void LoadRegistrationData()
   {...}    

   public void LoadTaxData()
   {...}
}

Is it good to have multiple "Load" methods as it sounds like a code smell since I have tweney Load methods? If so, how do you make the code more readable? Does each Load method load data into the corresponding table in the database via the repository?

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6 answers


Actually, if it's broken down into well-known steps, it's very readable.



See this article: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/07/coding-without-comments.html

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The big question is whether these methods should be publicly available. Ideally, you want something like a single public method Load

that loads everything from the database by calling all of your private Load * methods.



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Having them separate makes it more readable than the loading method with lots of templates to manage different scenarios

You have something like

public void Load() {
  if (condition1 that makes me know I'm loading an employee) {
    //whatever applies to this condition
  }
  if (condition2 that makes me know I'm loading salaries) {
    //whatever applies to this condition
  }
  if (condition3 that makes me know I'm loading registrationData) {
    //whatever applies to this condition
  }
  if (condition4 that makes me know I'm loading taxData) {
    //whatever applies to this condition
  }
}

Ugh.

Even if methods do very similar things, it might be a good idea to separate them and call similar methods. This way, if something changes, it will be a simple refactor =).

Finally, if the class gets too large (too many responsibilities), you might consider moving to more classes with more specific responsibilities.

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How about one point of exposure for the user called Load (), this method can take an enum argument in it indicating what they want to load, and then under the covers you can have as many methods as you need / want to implement this external public call.

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I am assuming that the loaded data will be saved in local fields / dictionaries and then used in another method.

if so, you can lazy load the values ​​as needed.

public class EmployeeLoader
{

    private List<String> _Employees = null;
    public List<String> Employees
    {
        get
        {
            if (_Employees == null)
            {
                LoadEmployees();
            }
            return _Employees;
        }
    }

    private void LoadEmployees()
    {
        //Load Data
    }
}

in addition to the fact that you can still have one Load () method to force the values ​​to be loaded into those backing fields.

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Depending on the implementation, you can condense them into a single Load method, or at least fewer load methods. Instead of many LoadX () methods, can it become one or more Load (X x) methods? eg:

public class EmployeeLoader()  
{ 
   public void Load(string pTableName)
   {...}
}
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