So I’ll set the scene – I was reviewing some code and refactoring it. First thing to do was to go through and take a look at the Resharper comments as they do a good job at tightening up sloppy code. In this instance I came across code that looked a bit like this:
var url = “http://someservice.com/”;
url += queryParameters;
DoSomething(url);
Of course, this can easily be refactored using string interpolation to
var url = $“http://someservice.com/{queryParameters}”;
DoSomething(url);
Which looks so much cleaner. Unfortunately this has actually just made my code even worse – I still have this horrible nasty string literal, now with embedded code. Argh, who does this stuff. Next step, factor the string out into a constants, or ideally configuration file.
private const string ServiceUrlTemplate = “http://someservice.com/{0}”;
and then:
var url = string.Format(Constants.ServiceUrlTemplate,queryParameters);
DoSomething(url);
I’m sure there are a ton of other ways to make this nicer and perhaps more readable but having a string literal with interpolation is not one of them.
Additional Note: If you’re not using Resharper or another equivalent tool, you’re not working effectively. Start using a refactoring tool today and don’t ignore the warnings. Spend time everyday reviewing and improving the code you write
