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Inappropriate coding practices - Unnecessary imports

Need​

Elimination of unnecessary imports to optimize resource usage

Context​

  • Usage of Ruby for building dynamic and object-oriented applications
  • Usage of net/http for building HTTP servers in a Node.js application
  • Usage of URI for parsing and manipulating Uniform Resource Identifiers
  • Usage of JSON for data interchange and storage

Description​

Non compliant code​

require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
require 'json'
require 'date' # Unnecessary import

def fetch_data
  uri = URI('http://example.com/api/data')
  response = Net::HTTP.get(uri)
  JSON.parse(response)
end

In the above code, we have imported four modules: net/http, uri, json, and date. The first three modules net/http, uri, and json are used in the fetch_data method to make an HTTP request to a URL and parse the JSON response. However, the date module is not used anywhere in the code. It is an unnecessary import.

Unnecessary imports are a bad practice because they load modules into memory that are not used by the application, which can increase the memory footprint of the application and slow down the startup time. It can also lead to confusion for other developers who may wonder where and how the imported module is being used.

In this case, the date module should be removed since it is not being used.

Steps​

  • Identify and remove any unnecessary imports in the code.
  • Review the code and determine which modules are actually being used.
  • Remove the imports of any modules that are not being used.
  • Ensure that the code still functions correctly after removing the unnecessary imports.

Compliant code​

require 'net/http'
require 'uri'
require 'json'

def fetch_data
  uri = URI('http://example.com/api/data')
  response = Net::HTTP.get(uri)
  JSON.parse(response)
end

The updated code removes the unnecessary import of the 'date' module. This module was not being used anywhere in the code, so it was unnecessary to import it.

The 'net/http', 'uri', and 'json' modules are still imported because they are used in the fetch_data function. The 'net/http' module is used to send an HTTP request, the 'uri' module is used to parse the URI of the API, and the 'json' module is used to parse the JSON response from the API.

By removing the unnecessary import, we reduce the load of the application, making it more efficient. It's always a good practice to only import the modules that are actually being used in the code. This not only improves the performance of the application but also makes the code cleaner and easier to maintain.

References​

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