Organizing Data

Problem: You use direct access to private fields inside a class.

Solution: Create a getter and setter for the field, and use only them for accessing the field.

Problem: A class (or group of classes) contains a data field. The field has its own behavior and associated data.

Solution: Create a new class, place the old field and its behavior in the class, and store the object of the class in the original class.

Problem: So you have many identical instances of a single class that you need to replace with a single object.

Solution: Convert the identical objects to a single reference object.

Problem: You have a reference object that’s too small and infrequently changed to justify managing its life cycle.

Solution: Turn it into a value object.

Problem: You have an array that contains various types of data.

Solution: Replace the array with an object that will have separate fields for each element.

Problem: Is domain data stored in classes responsible for the GUI?

Solution: Then it’s a good idea to separate the data into separate classes, ensuring connection and synchronization between the domain class and the GUI.

Problem: You have two classes that each need to use the features of the other, but the association between them is only unidirectional.

Solution: Add the missing association to the class that needs it.

Problem: You have a bidirectional association between classes, but one of the classes doesn’t use the other’s features.

Solution: Remove the unused association.

Problem: Your code uses a number that has a certain meaning to it.

Solution: Replace this number with a constant that has a human-readable name explaining the meaning of the number.

Problem: You have a public field.

Solution: Make the field private and create access methods for it.

Problem: A class contains a collection field and a simple getter and setter for working with the collection.

Solution: Make the getter-returned value read-only and create methods for adding/deleting elements of the collection.

Problem: A class has a field that contains type code. The values of this type aren’t used in operator conditions and don’t affect the behavior of the program.

Solution: Create a new class and use its objects instead of the type code values.

Problem: You have a coded type that directly affects program behavior (values of this field trigger various code in conditionals).

Solution: Create subclasses for each value of the coded type. Then extract the relevant behaviors from the original class to these subclasses. Replace the control flow code with polymorphism.

Problem: You have a coded type that affects behavior but you can’t use subclasses to get rid of it.

Solution: Replace type code with a state object. If it’s necessary to replace a field value with type code, another state object is “plugged in”.

Problem: You have subclasses differing only in their (constant-returning) methods.

Solution: Replace the methods with fields in the parent class and delete the subclasses.