Book Image

Refactoring with C#

By : Matt Eland
5 (1)
Book Image

Refactoring with C#

5 (1)
By: Matt Eland

Overview of this book

Software projects start as brand-new greenfield projects, but invariably become muddied in technical debt far sooner than you’d expect. In Refactoring with C#, you'll explore what technical debt is and how it arises before walking through the process of safely refactoring C# code using modern tooling in Visual Studio and more recent C# language features using C# 12 and .NET 8. This book will guide you through the process of refactoring safely through advanced unit testing with XUnit and libraries like Moq, Snapper, and Scientist .NET. You'll explore maintainable code through SOLID principles and defensive coding techniques made possible in newer versions of C#. You'll also find out how to run code analysis and write custom Roslyn analyzers to detect and resolve issues unique to your code. The nature of coding is changing, and you'll explore how to use AI with the GitHub Copilot Chat to refactor, test, document, and generate code before ending with a discussion about communicating technical debt to leadership and getting organizational buy-in to refactor your code in enterprise organizations and in agile teams. By the end of this book, you'll understand the nature of refactoring and see how you can safely, effectively, and repeatably pay down the technical debt in your application while adding value to your business.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1: Refactoring with C# in Visual Studio
7
Part 2: Refactoring Safely
13
Part 3: Advanced Refactoring with AI and Code Analysis
18
Part 4: Refactoring in the Enterprise

Summary

In this chapter, we saw several different open-source libraries that can improve the readability and capabilities of your tests.

  • Shouldly and FluentAssertions give you the readable syntax for writing assertions.
  • Bogus allows you to generate randomized test data for values that don’t matter.
  • Moq and NSubstitute help you isolate dependencies and provide alternative implementations for testing.
  • Snapper and Scientist .NET help catch issues where complex objects change in subtle ways.

Not every project will benefit from each of these libraries. However, knowing the tools at your disposal will help you as you refactor and maintain your code and expand your tests.

While it’s possible to do all the things in this chapter without using these libraries, all of these libraries represent established community projects dedicated to solving specific technical concerns.

In the next chapter, we’ll close out this section of this book with...