Lately I have been doing some refactoring of code as I go through it.

Trying to name variables correctly, breaking up long methods, trying to adhere to some coding standards.

One way that I have been employing to clean up code is to convert very long method signatures, or calls to methods with many parameters from LONG single line entities to shorter multi-line blocks.

This is simple, but tedious.  So I wrote a VS.Net macro to do it for me.

Simply copy and paste the macro code (paste into wordpad first to get rid of the missing newline problem) at the bottom of this article into a macro.  Then all you have to do is highlight the entire row you want to “narrow”, and run the macro.  You can always Cntl+z out of it if you want to undo the changes.

The results are good!  The following are examples of a long method signature, and a call to a method with a lot of arguments, and then the refactored results.

'*** Long method signature
Public Function ActivitySave(ByVal Activity As MyNamespace.Business.Equipment.Activity, ByVal StartTime As DateTime, ByVal EndTime As DateTime, ByVal StatusOverride As System.Nullable(Of MyNamespace.Business.Data.Criteria.Equipment.ActivityStatusEnum), ByVal Clerk As Integer) As Integer

'*** long method call
ActivityID = MainActivity.ActivitySave(Activity.ActivityID, Activity.Status, Activity.PurposeNotes, Activity.JobIndex, Activity.CategoryID, Activity.RequestedStartDate, Activity.RequestedEndDate, Activity.EquipmentID, Activity.PlanStartDate, Activity.PlanEndDate, Activity.ActualStartDate, Activity.ActualEndDate, Activity.DiscountScheduleID, Activity.DiscountOffset, Activity.CodeID, Activity.RentalRate, Activity.RowVersion, Clerk)

Here is the result of the refactoring:

'*** Refactored long method signature
Public Function ActivitySave(ByVal Activity As MyNamespace.Business.Equipment.Activity, _
                             ByVal StartTime As DateTime, _
                             ByVal EndTime As DateTime, _
                             ByVal StatusOverride As System.Nullable(Of MyNamespace.Business.Data.Criteria.Equipment.ActivityStatusEnum), _
                             ByVal Clerk As Integer) As Integer

'*** Refactored long call
ActivityID = MainActivity.ActivitySave(Activity.ActivityID, _
                                       Activity.Status, _
                                       Activity.PurposeNotes, _
                                       Activity.JobIndex, _
                                       Activity.CategoryID, _
                                       Activity.RequestedStartDate, _
                                       Activity.RequestedEndDate, _
                                       Activity.EquipmentID, _
                                       Activity.PlanStartDate, _
                                       Activity.PlanEndDate, _
                                       Activity.ActualStartDate, _
                                       Activity.ActualEndDate, _
                                       Activity.DiscountScheduleID, _
                                       Activity.DiscountOffset, _
                                       Activity.CodeID, _
                                       Activity.RentalRate, _
                                       Activity.RowVersion, _
                                       Clerk)

Here is the macro.

 Public Sub NarrowMethodsAndCalls()
        'Create an Undo context object so all the changes can be
        'undone by CTRL+Z
        Dim oUnDo As UndoContext = DTE.UndoContext

        'Supress the User Interface. This will make it run faster
        'and make all the changes appear once
        DTE.SuppressUI = True
        Try


            Dim oTextSelection As TextSelection = DTE.ActiveWindow.Selection
            Dim sOrigText As String = oTextSelection.Text

            Dim RegExp As New System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("([ .=_a-zA-Z0-9]*)(")
            Dim Match As System.Text.RegularExpressions.Match = RegExp.Match(sOrigText)
            If Match.Success Then
                Dim sMethod As String = Match.ToString
                Dim sParametersAndReturn() As String = sOrigText.Replace(sMethod, "").Split(",")
                Dim sFirstLineWhiteSpace As String
                Dim sb As New System.Text.StringBuilder
                sb.Append(" ", Trim(sMethod).Length)
                sFirstLineWhiteSpace = sb.ToString

                '*** redo the first line
                oTextSelection.Text = sMethod & sParametersAndReturn(0) & ", _"
                oTextSelection.NewLine()
                oTextSelection.Text = sFirstLineWhiteSpace

                For i As Integer = 1 To sParametersAndReturn.Length - 2
                    oTextSelection.Text = Trim(sParametersAndReturn(i)) & ", _"
                    oTextSelection.NewLine()
                Next
                oTextSelection.Text = Trim(sParametersAndReturn(sParametersAndReturn.Length - 1))
                oTextSelection.NewLine()



            Else
                MsgBox("failed to find function regexp match")
            End If
        Catch ex As Exception
            MsgBox("Error: " & ex.ToString)
        Finally

            'If an error occured, then need to make sure that the undo context is cleaned up.
            'Otherwise, the editor can be left in a perpetual undo context
            If oUnDo.IsOpen Then
                oUnDo.Close()
            End If

            DTE.SuppressUI = False
        End Try

    End Sub

A common thing people might want to do is check if a object is a certain type, or inherits a type, or implements a type.

This can be done in VB.Net with the following code:

TypeOf someObject Is ClassName

This works for inheritance heirarchy as well as checking for interface implementation.

Here is a sample app showing it in practice.

imports Microsoft.VisualBasic
imports System
Imports System.Collections.Generic

public module MyModule
    sub Main
        dim o as new subclass
        WL(typeof o is subclass)
        WL(typeof o is baseclass)
        WL(typeof o is IWhatever)
        RL()
    end sub

    #region "Helper methods"

    sub WL(text as object)
        Console.WriteLine(text)
    end sub

    sub WL(text as object, paramarray args as object())
        Console.WriteLine(text.ToString(), args)
    end sub
        
    sub RL()
        Console.ReadLine()
    end sub
    
    sub Break() 
        System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break()
    end sub

    #end region

end module


public interface IWhatever
end interface
public class BaseClass

end class

public class SubClass
inherits BaseClass
implements IWhatever

end class