Coding Style¶

Formatting Code¶

public class ClassA {

    private String letters[] = new String[]{"A", "B"};

    public int meth(String text, int number) {
        BinaryOperator plus = (a, b) -> {
            return a + b;
        };
        if (text != null) {
            try {
                meth("Some text", text.length());
            } catch (Throwable t) {
            } finally {
            }
        } else if (number >= 0) {
            text = number == 0 ? "empty" : "nonempty";
        }
        do {
            number = number + 1;
        } while (number < 2);
        for (int i = 1; i < 100; i++) {
            number = number + i;
        }
        while (number > 0) {
            number--;
        }
    }
}

Logging¶

We have adopted a pattern where the top of every class file has a line like this:

private static final Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(DatasetUtil.class.getCanonicalName());

Use this logger field with varying levels such as fine or info like this:

logger.fine("will get thumbnail from dataset logo");

Generally speaking you should use fine for everything that you don’t want to show up in Glassfish’s server.log file by default. If you use a higher level such as info for common operations, you will probably hear complaints that your code is too “chatty” in the logs. These logging levels can be controlled at runtime both on your development machine and in production as explained in the Debugging section.

When adding logging, do not simply add System.out.println() lines because the logging level cannot be controlled.

Avoid Hard-Coding Strings¶

Special strings should be defined as public constants. For example, DatasetFieldConstant.java contains a field for “title” and it’s used in many places in the code (try “Find Usages” in Netbeans). This is better than writing the string “title” in all those places.

Type Safety¶

If you just downloaded Netbeans and are using the out-of-the-box settings, you should be in pretty good shape. Unfortunately, the default configuration of Netbeans doesn’t warn you about type-safety problems you may be inadvertently introducing into the code. To see these warnings, click Netbeans -> Preferences -> Editor -> Hints and check the following:

• “Raw Types” under “Standard Javac Warnings”

If you know of a way to easily share Netbeans configuration across a team, please get in touch.

Formatting Code¶