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Inappropriate coding practices - Unnecessary imports

Need​

Elimination of unnecessary imports to improve code efficiency

Context​

  • Usage of Go 1.16 for building efficient and scalable applications
  • Usage of gin-gonic/gin for building web applications and APIs in Go
  • Usage of net/http for building HTTP servers in a Node.js application
  • Usage of os for accessing operating system-related information

Description​

Non compliant code​

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "os"
    "log"
    "net/http"
    "github.com/gin-gonic/gin"
    "encoding/json" // Unnecessary import
    "io/ioutil"    // Unnecessary import
)

func main() {
    r := gin.Default()

    r.GET("/", func(c *gin.Context) {
        c.String(http.StatusOK, "Hello World")
    })

    if err := r.Run(":8080"); err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
}

In this Go code snippet, a simple HTTP server is set up using the Gin framework. The server listens on port 8080 and responds with "Hello World" to GET requests at the root ("/") endpoint.

However, there are unnecessary imports in the code. The imported packages encoding/json and io/ioutil are not used anywhere in the code. This is considered bad practice because it loads modules that will not be used, unnecessarily increasing the load.

These unused imports can lead to confusion for other developers reading the code, as they may try to understand where and how these imports are used. Additionally, it may slightly increase the startup time of the application as the Go runtime needs to initialize these packages.

To fix this vulnerability, remove the unnecessary imports from the code.

Steps​

  • Identify and remove unnecessary imports from the code.
  • Review the code and determine which imports are not being used.
  • Remove the unused imports to reduce the unnecessary load on the application.
  • Ensure that the application still functions correctly after removing the unnecessary imports.

Compliant code​

package main

import (
    "log"
    "net/http"
    "github.com/gin-gonic/gin"
)

func main() {
    r := gin.Default()

    r.GET("/", func(c *gin.Context) {
        c.String(http.StatusOK, "Hello World")
    })

    if err := r.Run(":8080"); err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
}

The original code had unnecessary imports that were not being used in the application. These imports were "fmt", "os", "encoding/json", and "io/ioutil". Importing unnecessary packages can lead to increased load times and memory usage, which can negatively impact the performance of the application.

In the fixed code, these unnecessary imports have been removed. The remaining imports are "log", "net/http", and "github.com/gin-gonic/gin", which are all used in the application.

The "log" package is used for logging any errors that occur when the server is running. The "net/http" package is used for handling HTTP requests and responses. The "github.com/gin-gonic/gin" package is a web framework for building HTTP services.

After removing the unnecessary imports, the application should still function correctly as before, but with improved performance due to the reduced load.

References​

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