During the JDave try, the focus was on Bdd side of the exercise, but, nonetheless, the StringTemplater’s code was yelling “Refactor me! Refactor me!” at me 
.
Actually, that I like least, it’s the Guard Clause, I used to split a marker in key-value form:
private String name(String[] pair) {
if (pair.length != 2)
return "";
return "$" + pair[0].trim();
}
Usually I like that pattern, it’s a well know way to avoid nested conditional, but Anti-If Campaign, promoted by Francesco Cirillo made me think.
The first try didn’t satisfied me:
private String name(String[] pair) {
return (pair.length != 2) ? "" : "$" + pair[0].trim();
}
Indeed, I believe it’s more cryptic and ugly than the original one.
Looking the code more carefully, I saw another thing: I was violating the principle “Ask, don’t tell“, handling some data that could be tied together.
Creating the new class, I thought another thing:
“Why am I using the ‘IF‘?”
I did for avoid a runtime exception… but is an exception evil?
It isn’t if we can handle it!
So at the end this is my final product:
package biz.scalzo.kata.stringtemplater.jdave;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.NoSuchElementException;
public class StringTemplater {
public String replace(String stringToReplace) {
return replace(stringToReplace, "");
}
public String replace(String stringToReplace, String markers) {
return replaceEmptyMarkers(replace(stringToReplace, initialIterator(markers)));
}
private String replaceEmptyMarkers(String stringToReplace) {
return stringToReplace.replaceAll("\\$\\w+", "");
}
private Iterator initialIterator(String markers) {
return Arrays.asList(markers.split(",")).iterator();
}
private String replace(String stringToReplace, Iterator markers) {
try {
return replaceMarker(stringToReplace, markers);
} catch (NoSuchElementException e) {
return stringToReplace;
}
}
private String replaceMarker(String stringToReplace,
Iterator markers) {
Pair pair = new Pair(markers.next());
String newString = stringToReplace.replace(pair.name, pair.value);
return replace(newString, markers);
}
private class Pair {
private String name;
private String value;
private Pair(String nameAndValue) {
init(nameAndValue.split(":"));
}
private void init(String[] nameAndValue) {
try {
name = "$" + nameAndValue[0].trim();
value = nameAndValue[1].trim();
} catch (IndexOutOfBoundsException e) {
name = "";
value = "";
}
}
}
}
I think a I could refactor more, but I was enough satisfied: I reached my goal to avoid IF and I’ve start to think the exception in different way.
