If a method has several temps and parameters, it can be difficult to break it up with ComposedMethod. Each sub-method requires too many parameters for the code to read well.
Instead:
You will find that the new class is easy to refactor. The sub-methods that were so painful to separate before become trivial, because all the methods share the same name space.
A MethodObject is a great way to use ObjectsInsteadOfClosures; or to port code from a language which has closures to one which does not.
Example anyone? See MethodObjectExample
I once created a method object to clean up some transaction-pairing code in a portfolio management system. Much to my surprise, the new object began to take on a pivotal role in our evolving system, to the point that the initial method was reduced from producing answers to producing objects. That is, it became a FactoryMethod for objects we now realized were more in the domain than the answers we had previously sought.
The object had been named after the method that spawned it, a verb turned into a noun. With its increased importance, we thought the object should be named properly but found that our domain specialists couldn't help. They ended up adopting our nominalization.
I've cited this example many times as a case where evolutionary modeling, refactoring, and simple source code esthetics led to a discovery in the domain unreachable by other means. I've been quizzed on this by my analysis-oriented friends: (surely) if I had worked a little harder up front, couldn't I have discovered this thing and have avoided ever programming it any other way? But the answer is no. It wasn't there as a concept in the expert's mind until we put it there. The object would remain lost today were it not for disgust for code that failed to be clear. -- WardCunningham
See WhatIsAnAdvancer.
This is interesting because CPU architects are just getting around to hardware optimizations based on the stack pointer. Specialized stack caches were found in the Intel 960 and an AT&T chip. More recently, memory renaming hardware has been proposed that essentially converts stack references to registers.
Obviously, if refactorings like MethodObject are widely used, and move data from stack to heap, these stack oriented hardware optimizations will be less useful. That's okay: there are more general techniques. It's just that the stack-oriented techniques are so much easier to implement.
Further, good compilers can often arrange to pass parameters in registers. C++ compilers almost certainly will not be able to do so for a MethodObject; even Java compiler disambiguation is probably incapable of register allocating a MethodObject.
Oh, yeah, doesn't a bit of special care need to be taken if the function refactored by MethodObject is potentially recursive, or even just reentrant? A MethodObject needs to be allocated for each potentially simultaneously active calling context; allocating the MethodObject as a local will suffice.
I'm interested in any other implications of object refactorings.
-- AndyGlew
SmalltalkBestPracticePatterns and the RefactoringBook both say that each parameter from the old method should become a parameter on the constructor of the MethodObject. Intuitively I would have made them parameters on the "compute" method (and maybe even the parameter that is pointing back to the original object). Any advantages/disadvantages fo either solution? -- MarkoSchulz
Well, sending them to the constructor can be more optimal if you are going to reuse the MethodObject over and over again with the same inputs. However, sending them to the compute method allows you to use the same object with different inputs.
Passing the parameters to the constructor makes it easier to refactor your new object, since you won't have to muck with parameters every time you move code out of your compute method into another method. Also, being able to use the same method object with different inputs is an optimization done to avoid the cost of an extra object creation and deletion. Like all optimizations, it should never be done until necessary.
Passing the parameters to the constructor is thread-safe. Otherwise, you must ensure that the compute method is synchronized so it can never be called in the middle of another computation. -- JuanCasares?
Conceptually, the reason you're making a MethodObject is that you're saying "this algorithm is complicated enough to make an object with its own instance identity." That identity is determined by its inputs, since that's the only thing to distinguish one instance of your MethodObject class from another. If you pass the inputs in for the "compute" method, than you don't have any significant object identity ... you might as well just make it a class method on a utility class at that point. -- francis
Specifically, if you really need the MethodObject, then the first thing the compute method must do is assign the parameters to the instance variables. -- JackRich
Refactoring into a MethodObject is one of the most powerful refactorings I know, but I have yet to grasp really why it has such a big impact on the code. With most refactorings I can imagine beforehand how much nicer the code will be, but after introducing a MethodObject I'm often gladly surprised. I may even use this refactoring too seldom because I can't imagine the result.
The namespace inside of a method is rather limited. That inside of an object is much more powerful, as it can be shared between methods. Long stretches of logic require more powerful mechanisms to make their structure clear. Perhaps that's why moving from a lexical namespace to an object namespace does so much to clarify the logic. The sapling has been transplanted from a pot to real soil, and now it can grow more comfortably.
If you objectify something explicitly, you are free to really work with it. You are not limited to the implicit operation of the programming language. For example, say your method needs to live in a different module, even a different machine, you have an identifiable lump which may be moved, the 'dotted lines' for such a restructuring already exist.
I tend to think of everything as a simple object in some sense. Sometimes, the identity/encapsulation of the object is not at the same scale as the object so it cannot be treated individually. That is a form of optimization away from my conceptual default that every entity has an explicitly structured identity. I particularly like Linda for its support of this approach. Smalltalk appears to have a similar perfume.
Recently, I've been working on an ObjectiveCee object, "OSBlock", that acts like a Smalltalk block. I've made a lot of progress, but the parsing(of a string representing objective-c code) represents some complexity. I've ended up having a parser MethodObject that turns a string into a tree structure by means of a string-scanning MethodObject that scans through a string and keeps track of 'depth'(of square brackets: in [foo bar:[baz gaz]], foo bar: is at depth 1, and baz gaz is at depth 2) so that another MethodObject can 'chunk' a string according to depth(such that the aforementioned example string is chunked into: "_chunk_1_0", "foo bar:_chunk_2_0", and "baz gaz").
MethodObject is a very powerful and useful refactoring, that gets a lot of noise out of an existing object. Usually, when a whole bunch of code is sitting around, it could be more useful somewhere else- especially if it declares a ton of temps, in which case it's practically screaming 'make me an object.' The string chunking method was larger than many of my existing objects were, the first time I implemented it. I MethodObjected it, then reimplemented it using the old interface, and it was nice.
The class was actually not intended to be instantiated--this was in JavaLanguage, and he'd made the constructor private. I made the constructor public, and made it take all the data it needed in arguments and put it in instance variables. Suddenly I realized I'd done the MethodObject refactoring, which I'd read about on this page. After that, the ExtractMethod refactorings I had wanted to do before suddenly became very easy. With ExtractMethod and RenameMethod refactorings, I removed the LongMethodSmell.
Then I discovered that this class and another class were similar, and performed an ExtractSuperclass? to make them siblings.--ApoorvaMuralidhara
This looks like a FunctorObject to me...
I'm looking for a MethodObjectExample before I proceed. --TerryLorber
This page mirrored in WikiPagesAboutRefactoring as of July 17, 2004