Yes I know, it is supposed to be Red, Green, Refactor, but as a elegant coder I have access to Chris who is a carbon based refactoring engine. 

I had some code that I was unhappy with.  Basically one of my constructors loads a embedded XML document and uses LINQ to XML to set some standard properties on the class.   Since I know Chris is a expert on all things LINQ I sent him the constructor I had written and asked if he could see how to make it better.  Here is the code for the original constructor:

 1:  Public Dice()

 2:  {

 3:              // Get the XElments for the game basics

 4:              XElement basics = EmbeddedResources.GetEmbeddedXElement(

                     "OpenGamingLicense.Framework", "Resources.Basics.xml");

 5:   

 6:              // Query for the nodes for this class

 7:              var fos = from dice in basics.Elements("Dice")

 8:                       select new

 9:                       {

10:                           name = (string)dice.Element("Name"),

11:                           description = (string)dice.Element("Description"),

12:                       };

13:   

14:              // foreach node (should oly be 1) set the name, description 

                       and license info for this class

15:              foreach (var fo in fos)

16:              {

17:                  Name = fo.name;            

18:                  Description = fo.description;

19:                  Legal = (string) basics.Element("Legal");

20:              }

21:  }

So I was pretty unhappy with the way the code at line 7 worked.  Basically I know there will only be one element in the XML document that matches the Elements("Dice") Criteria.  But all the examples I had showed using a foreach construct to return the data for the node so I fired of a email to Chris to see if he had any suggestions.  In the span of 25 minutes I got back 5 emails.  His first cut looked like this:

   1:  // Query for the nodes for this class

   2:  var fos = from dice in basics.Elements("Dice")

   3:  select new Dice

   4:          {

   5:             name = (string)dice.Element("Name"),

   6              description = (string)dice.Element("Description"),

   7:   legal = (string) basics.Element("Legal");

   9:          };

Which was cool and got rid of the foreach loop but still had some overhead that he was not happy with.  So this was his second attempt (mind you these are flying at me in a 4 minute time span)

     1: var fos = (from dice in basics.Elements("Dice")

   2: select new {name = (string)dice.Element("Name"),

                  description = (string)dice.Element("Description"),}).First();

   3:   

   4: Name = fos.name;

   5: Description = fos.description;

   6: Legal = (string)basics.Element("Legal");

Cleaned up a bit and closer to what I wanted.  So here was the third version

   1: var mydice = (from dice in basics.Elements("Dice") select dice).First();

   2: Name = (string)mydice.Element("Name");

   3: Description = (string)mydice.Element("Description");

   4:   

   5: Legal = (string)basics.Element("Legal");

   1: public Dice() : 

        this(EmbeddedResources.GetEmbeddedXElement("OpenGamingLicense.Framework", 

              "Resources.Basics.xml"))

   2: {

   3: }

   4:          

   5: public Dice(XElement basics)

   6: {

   7:      var mydice = (from dice in basics.Elements("Dice") select dice).First();

   8:      Name = (string)mydice.Element("Name");

   9:      Description = (string)mydice.Element("Description");

  10:      Legal = (string)basics.Element("Legal");

  11: }

Chris had pointed out the original versions of the constructor did not allow for testing.  Now I can still easily access the embedded XML document for the dll using the empty constructor on line 1 or I can test the constructor by passing in an XElement.   All really good ideas and taken care of in a few minutes.  In addition he had reduced 21 lines of code to 11 and added the ability to test the constructor. As Dave pointed out,  Chris is a machine. :-).  

Thanks Dude!

Darrel Carver Uncategorized .Net 3.5, Linq, TDD, Unit Testing, Widgets of Wisdom, XML