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Coding Guidelines

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Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Java Related
    1. Coding style
      1. File headers
      2. SVN keywords
      3. Tabs
      4. Unit Tests
      5. Nested class definitions
      6. Variable declarations
      7. Miscellaneous
    2. Exceptions
    3. Logging
      1. Getting a logger
      2. Using the logger
      3. Logger configuration
  3. Design Related

Introduction

These guidelines gives some recommendations for those who want to adapt the current code and/or send in new plugins. They should be regarded as recommendations, not rules, but following them will make life easier for both parties.

Furthermore they give guidelines for how to adapt the current code to the design that are already decided and used in the NetarchiveSuite software. This relates to the design described in the System Design document.

Guidelines on Unit tests can be found in the unit test guidelines

Java Related

Coding style

Our overall coding style is based on Sun's guidelines with the following extensions:

File headers

we add the following header to all our Java-files: 

/* File:        $Id: DBConnect.java 837 2009-06-09 15:13:41Z ngiraud $
 * Revision:    $Revision: 837 $
 * Author:      $Author: ngiraud $
 * Date:        $Date: 2009-06-09 17:13:41 +0200 (ti, 09 jun 2009) $
 *
 * The Netarchive Suite - Software to harvest and preserve websites
 * Copyright 2004-2007 Det Kongelige Bibliotek and Statsbiblioteket, Denmark
 *
 * This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
 * modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
 * License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
 * version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
 *
 * This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
 * Lesser General Public License for more details.
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
 * License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
 * Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
 */

and the following header to our JSP-files: 

<%--
File:       $Id: Bitpreservation-filestatus-missing.jsp 781 2009-03-25 13:39:20Z elzi $
Revision:   $Revision: 781 $
Author:     $Author: elzi $
Date:       $Date: 2009-03-25 14:39:20 +0100 (on, 25 mar 2009) $
The Netarchive Suite - Software to harvest and preserve websites
Copyright 2004-2007 Det Kongelige Bibliotek and Statsbiblioteket, Denmark
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
Lesser General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA  02110-1301  USA
--%>

SVN keywords

If you commit a new file directly to our SVN repository, you must add the SVN property (svn:keywords) for this file to the value:  URL Revision Author Date Id 

Eclipse will add this automatically for you for all new files if you make sure that auto-props are enabled for subversion. The following modifications to the file $HOME/.subversion/config needs to be made

Add or uncomment the line 

enable-auto-props = yes

Add the following to the end of the file: 

[auto-props]
*.java = svn:keywords=URL Revision Author Date Id
*.xml = svn:keywords=URL Revision Author Date Id
*.jsp = svn:keywords=URL Revision Author Date Id
*.css = svn:keywords=URL Revision Author Date Id
*.properties = svn:keywords=URL Revision Author Date Id

Tabs

Remember that tabs are not wanted in our code. You must tell your IDE (Eclipse or Intellij) to replace all tabs with spaces.

Unit Tests

All code must be covered as much as possible in unit tests. Please refer to unit test guideline for more information.

Nested class definitions

Declare nested classes as static whenever possible. This avoids an unnecessary link back to the outer class, and in particular makes it possible to serialized the inner class even if the outer class is not serializable. The "invisible" link to the outer class found in a non-static inner class can also lead to unexpected memory leaks, as an inner instance may outlive its outer instance and keep it artificially alive through its implicit link. Nested class definitions appear at the beginning of the enclosing class before (static) variables.

Example: 

class A {
    public static B {
        // B stuff
    }
    public static Integer ACONST=42;
    ...
}

Variable declarations

The general rule is "put declarations only at the beginning of blocks". We allow one exception from this rule, namely declarations that 1) initialize the variable and 2) depend on previous calculations are allowed be further down the block. Example: 

void Foo() {
int i1=42;
int i2=0;
i2 = f(i1);
int i3 = g(i2);
}

Miscellaneous

Don't use * import statements, it clutters up the namespace and makes it hard to see what is intended. Good IDEs can do your imports automatically anyway.

Tabs should never be used in the source files. Most editors can use spaces instead.

Public methods should always check that their arguments follow the JavaDoc restriction with respect to being null, empty, non-negative etc. The ArgumentNotValid class has a number of useful methods for this.

JavaDoc is strongly encouraged, as the code might explain what happens, but not the why; the JavaDoc must describe the intent of the function, including assumptions and invariants as well as expectations of the arguments.

Exceptions

At the outset of the project, we decided to use undeclared exceptions throughout our code to avoid to avoid cluttering method definitions with exceptions that are merely passing through, and to have more flexibility in what exceptions can be thrown in subclasses and interface implementations. Before you argue this decision, please read the arguments for and against. Notice that the fact that an exception is unchecked does not mean that you don't need to document its usage in JavaDoc for your methods, and you can still add it to the throws clause.

At any point where exceptions enter our code, we catch them and either handle them immediately or throw one of our exceptions instead, with the caught exception as the cause. All our exceptions inherit from dk.netarkivet.common.exceptions.NetarkivetException, and we try to keep the number of exceptions at a minimum. At the moment, the following exceptions exist:

One standard example of how to catch outside exceptions and handle resource freeing is: 

    InputStream in;
    try {
        try {
            in = new FileInputStream(file);
            in.readAll(...);
        } finally {
            if (in != null) {
                in.close();
            }
        }
    } catch (IOException e) {
        throw new IOFailure("Failed to read file '" + file + "'", e);
    }

Notice how the error message contains the file name in quotes (makes it easier to understand empty file error), and how the IOFailure gets the original exception passed in -- it is very important to never let the original exception vanish.

When it comes to handling our internal exceptions, the general rule is: Avoid catching exceptions unless you need to catch it. Also expressed as "Never catch an exception that you do not know how to handle" (with apologies to H. P. Lovecraft).

You need to catch an internal exception if:

Logging

We use the apache.commons.logging framework for logging (currently version 1.0.4), which gives us one unified interface that can be realized with different underlying systems.

However, currently the monitoring component requires the underlying implementation to be Jdk14 logging, since it exposes log messages using a LogHandler implementation for the Jdk14 framework. To use another logging framework, this method would need to be redefined for that framework (for instance an appender for Log4J).

Getting a logger

Retrieving an logger is a straightforward matter. Each class uses the logger interface to obtain a logger, using the class name to identify the logger. 

import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
public class MyClass {
   // A named logger for this class is retrieved
   protected final Log log = LogFactory.getLog(getClass());
}

Using the logger

Logging messages are generated using the level specific logging methods:

See http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/logging/guide.html#Logging_a_Message

When we used java.util.logging, we used these levels 

public class MyClass {
...
  public MyClass() {
    logger.trace("Creating MyClass");
    ...
    logger.info("Timeout="+timeout);
  }
  public void aMethod() {
    logger.trace("Entering aMethod");
    try {
      logger.debug("preparing to do something");
      doSomethingThatMayThrowExceptions();
    }
   catch (NullPointerException e) {
    logger.trace("something threw nullpointer exception", e);
    }
   catch (Exception e) {
    logger.trace("something threw an exception", e);
    }
    logger.trace("Leaving aMethod");
  }
}

Logger configuration

The logging levels and handlers are defined using a configuration file =log.prop=. The loglevels mentioned in this configuration file uses loglevels defined by java.util.logging.Level

An example file: 

#define handler(s)
handlers=java.util.logging.FileHandler
#define default logging level
.level=INFO
#setup the file handler
java.util.logging.FileHandler.pattern=java%g.log
java.util.logging.FileHandler.limit=100000
java.util.logging.FileHandler.count=3
java.util.logging.FileHandler.formatter=java.util.logging.XMLFormatter
#define logging levels
dk.netarkivet.level=WARNING
dk.netarkivet.demo.MyClass.level=ALL

In order to load the configuration file add the following to the java command lines: 

-Dorg.apache.commons.logging.Log=org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Jdk14Logger
-Djava.util.logging.config.file=log.prop

Design Related

The following is to be split between the [System Design] document and this document, so that coding guidelines of how to code according to this design is put here, while description of how the design works is put into the System Design document.

Guidelines/Coding Guideline (last edited 2011-11-28 12:40:53 by MikisSethSorensen)