Comments on: Refactoring a Switch statement

By: Christian Shiel

Christian Shiel — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:30:25 +0000

Hey thanks for this, I really like it I actually have some questions…

Should we EVER use a switch statement?

The only time I consider using them is when I know the code is final and that code is sitting on the very top layer almost like a script.

In my last job I was “set straight” that case statements were in fact the only way to do certain things which at the time I strongly disagreed with. For instance type checking & do such and such if its this type etc. I took it quite hard that my efforts to aim for elegance were put down and dismissed and I had to have those ideas knocked out of me! I’m still very bitter by the whole experience.

I wonder what stands in the way of these ideals, and why we have things such as case statements?

By: Colin Jack

Colin Jack — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:08:00 +0000

I’ve used this pattern too, sometimes I’ll have a domain factory class that produces little strategy objects based on some criteria. Hate using IoC in such a situation and this solution works a treat.

By: Refactoring the Refactored Switch Statement | Elegant Code

Refactoring the Refactored Switch Statement | Elegant Code — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:44:01 +0000

[...] In her book, Relevance and Linguistic Meaning: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse Markers, Diane Blakemore speaks, among other things, of incoherent interpretation and contextual assumptions. While pondering these phrases, I was reminded of Chris Brandsma’s recent article on Refactoring a switch statement. [...]

By: Bharath

Bharath — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:16:06 +0000

Problem is we have aroung 1500 switch cases in our controller is there anything we can do to refator

By: Bill Sorensen

Bill Sorensen — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:18:43 +0000

Here’s an alternative:
http://www.netobjectives.com/PatternRepository/index.php?title=TheStrategyTemplatePattern

By: W.D.

W.D. — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:46:46 +0000

I agree with JP, refactoring to patterns would point you to polymorphism.

By: Bill Bailey

Bill Bailey — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:52:10 +0000

I just created a switch statement with 5,000 items (I tried more but Visual Studio kept crashing). This coworker must have been an idiot with a lot of time on his hands.

By: Rainer Schuster

Rainer Schuster — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:31:25 +0000

I’ve allready done this approach in a small project. Have you meassured the performance ?

By: J.P. Hamilton

J.P. Hamilton — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:22:02 +0000

I am going with Sergio on this one. A switch might be an indication of an OCP violation and I would look towards polymorphism to get rid of it entirely.

By: cristian

cristian — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:46:20 +0000

Refactor a switch statement into a dictionary remembers me my early days learning python, I asked one day “what? python doesn’t have a switch statement?” and the python users answer me with the “dictionary use”.
There still a few things to learn from languages as python