A method or constructor assigns a field to a locally instantiated value.
Assign the field to a parameter supplied by a client by extracting one-half of the assignment statement to a parameter.
Motivation Sometimes you want to assign a field inside an object to a value provided by another object. If the field is already assigned to a local value, you can extract one-half of the assignment statement to a parameter so that a client can supply the field's value rather than the host object. I needed this refactoring after performing Replace Inheritance with Delegation [F]. At the end of that refactoring, a delegating class contains a field for an object it delegates to (the delegatee). The delegating class assigns this delegate field to a new instance of the delegate. Yet I needed a client object to supply the delegate's value. Extract Parameter allowed me to simply extract the delegate instantiation code to a parameter value supplied by a client. Mechanics -
The assignment statement for the field must be in a constructor or method before you can do this refactoring. If it isn't already in a constructor or method, move it to one. -
Apply Add Parameter [F] to pass in the value for the field, using the field's type as the type for the parameter. Make the parameter's value be the value the field is assigned to within its host object. Alter the assignment statement so the field is assigned to the new parameter. When you have finished this refactoring, you may wish to remove unused parameters by applying Remove Parameter [F]. Example This example comes from a step I perform during the refactoring Move Embellishment to Decorator (144). The HTML Parser's DecodingNode class contains a field called delegate that is assigned to a new instance of StringNode inside DecodingNode's constructor: public class DecodingNode implements Node... private Node delegate; public DecodingNode(StringBuffer textBuffer, int textBegin, int textEnd) { delegate = new StringNode(textBuffer, textBegin, textEnd); }
Given this code, I apply this refactoring as follows. - 1. Since delegate is already assigned to a value within DecodingNode's contructor, I can move to the next step.
- 2. I apply Add Parameter [F] and use a default value of new StringNode(textBuffer, textBegin, textEnd). I then alter the assignment statement so that it assigns delegate to the parameter value, newDelegate:
public class DecodingNode implements Node... private Node delegate; public DecodingNode(StringBuffer textBuffer, int textBegin, int textEnd, Node newDelegate) { delegate = newDelegate; }
This change involves updating the client, StringNode, to pass in the value for newDelegate:
public class StringNode... ... return new DecodingNode( new StringNode(textBuffer, textBegin, textEnd) );
I compile and test to confirm that everything still works just fine.
After completing this refactoring, I will apply Remove Parameter [F] several times, so that the constructor for DecodingNode becomes:
public class DecodingNode implements Node... private Node delegate; public DecodingNode( StringBuffer textBuffer, int textBegin, int textEnd, Node newDelegate) { delegate = newDelegate; }
And that's it for this short and sweet refactoring.
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