Removing explicit default access modifiers (Roslyn analyzer and codefix)
This was really an enriching experience. Not only I finally understood better formatting and trivias in Roslyn, I also had to think about what my code looks like in general, which I thought I had clear in my head. Here’s the full story.
Probably as everybody, when I started programming in C# I followed what tools like Visual Studio did to my code. In particular the explicit default access modifiers. For example when you refactor a code into a new method, its signature becomes private void FooBar(). Nothing wrong. But then I started to like my code to be more succinct. Not obfuscated or unreadable. Just succinct (although the line between unreadable and succinct is very thin). Why would I have the private in the previous example? It’s default anyway. It’s just noise (I think).
So I started writing code without all this noise. And I like it. As a brain training I decided to write an analyzer and an codefix to detect these explicit default access modifiers. It seemed fairly straightforward. And I also wanted to try to write tests for both the analyzer and the codefix, because Visual Studio by default generates you project for tests with bunch of code, to learn how that’s handled. And also I was bored in a hotel.
Interestingly as I was writing the very isolated tests I saw the code from different angle, I realized why people write i.e. the private keyword explicitly. It looks consistent. I like consistency. I like it a lot. For a moment I was questioning whether I really want to continue writing a code that removes “consistency”.
Let me show you.
class C
{
public void Foo()
{ }
private void Bar()
{ }
}
class C
{
public void Foo()
{ }
void Bar()
{ }
}
See how in the first example the method declarations look consistent? The other example is not. Or is it? In these simple example it really does like it’s inconsistent. But once you start adding other modifiers like static, async or simply protected internal it’s back to inconsistent look. Good, back to coding.
For the analyzer the biggest challenge was to detect all the possible elements and defaults – you have classes, structs, interfaces, fields and events, properties, methods and constructors, delegates plus some could be nested. Should be it (let me know if not).
public override void Initialize(AnalysisContext context)
{
context.RegisterSyntaxNodeAction(AnalyzeClassOrStructOrInterfaceDeclaration, SyntaxKind.ClassDeclaration, SyntaxKind.StructDeclaration, SyntaxKind.InterfaceDeclaration, SyntaxKind.EnumDeclaration);
context.RegisterSyntaxNodeAction(AnalyzeFieldOrEvent, SyntaxKind.FieldDeclaration, SyntaxKind.EventFieldDeclaration);
context.RegisterSyntaxNodeAction(AnalyzeMethodOrConstructor, SyntaxKind.MethodDeclaration, SyntaxKind.ConstructorDeclaration);
context.RegisterSyntaxNodeAction(AnalyzeProperty, SyntaxKind.PropertyDeclaration);
context.RegisterSyntaxNodeAction(AnalyzeDelegate, SyntaxKind.DelegateDeclaration);
}
static void AnalyzeClassOrStructOrInterfaceDeclaration(SyntaxNodeAnalysisContext context)
{
var node = (BaseTypeDeclarationSyntax)context.Node;
var defaultModifier = node.Parent.IsKind(SyntaxKind.NamespaceDeclaration)
? SyntaxKind.InternalKeyword
: SyntaxKind.PrivateKeyword;
HandleDefaultModifier(context, node.Modifiers, defaultModifier);
}
static void AnalyzeFieldOrEvent(SyntaxNodeAnalysisContext context)
{
var node = (BaseFieldDeclarationSyntax)context.Node;
HandleDefaultModifier(context, node.Modifiers, SyntaxKind.PrivateKeyword);
}
static void AnalyzeMethodOrConstructor(SyntaxNodeAnalysisContext context)
{
var node = (BaseMethodDeclarationSyntax)context.Node;
HandleDefaultModifier(context, node.Modifiers, SyntaxKind.PrivateKeyword);
}
static void AnalyzeProperty(SyntaxNodeAnalysisContext context)
{
var node = (PropertyDeclarationSyntax)context.Node;
HandleDefaultModifier(context, node.Modifiers, SyntaxKind.PrivateKeyword);
}
static void AnalyzeDelegate(SyntaxNodeAnalysisContext context)
{
var node = (DelegateDeclarationSyntax)context.Node;
var defaultModifier = node.Parent.IsKind(SyntaxKind.NamespaceDeclaration)
? SyntaxKind.InternalKeyword
: SyntaxKind.PrivateKeyword;
HandleDefaultModifier(context, node.Modifiers, defaultModifier);
}
static void HandleDefaultModifier(SyntaxNodeAnalysisContext context, SyntaxTokenList modifiers, SyntaxKind defaultModifier)
{
var index = modifiers.IndexOf(defaultModifier);
if (index != -1)
{
context.ReportDiagnostic(Diagnostic.Create(Rule, modifiers[index].GetLocation()));
}
}
Although I spent significant amount of time, way more than I expected, on the codefix, at the end it’s just a few lines of code. Handling trivias versus formatting was something new and I’m glad I grasped it. In this case I only needed to take the trivias (basically all the leading white characters) from the token being removed (and just the token itself) and merge it with the next token (and there’s always going to be some). No need to worry with reformatting or anything like that.
public sealed override async Task RegisterCodeFixesAsync(CodeFixContext context)
{
var root = await context.Document.GetSyntaxRootAsync(context.CancellationToken).ConfigureAwait(false);
var diagnostic = context.Diagnostics.First();
var diagnosticSpan = diagnostic.Location.SourceSpan;
var syntax = root.FindToken(diagnosticSpan.Start);
context.RegisterCodeFix(
CodeAction.Create(
title: Title,
createChangedDocument: c => Fix(context.Document, syntax, c),
equivalenceKey: Title),
diagnostic);
}
async Task<Document> Fix(Document document, SyntaxToken syntax, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
var root = await document.GetSyntaxRootAsync(cancellationToken).ConfigureAwait(false);
var nextToken = syntax.GetNextToken();
return document.WithSyntaxRoot(root
.ReplaceTokens(new[] { syntax, nextToken }, (t, _) =>
{
if (t == syntax)
return SyntaxFactory.Token(SyntaxKind.None);
if (t == nextToken)
return nextToken.WithLeadingTrivia(syntax.LeadingTrivia.AddRange(nextToken.LeadingTrivia));
return default(SyntaxToken);
}));
}
You can find the complete code in this repository. PRs welcome. And if you want to use it, just add ExplicitDefaultAccessModifiersAnalyzer NuGet package to your projects.
