Artificial System Clock Code review critique
 

Hi - I'm very new here (1st post). I read the introductory docs, and looked at the categories, but I didn't see a specific place for posting code for review/critique. My apologies if this is not the appropriate place to do that...

Here is some code I am hoping to get reviewed/critiqued by people who know Ruby. I don't know squat about Ruby, but I am pretty familiar with modern OO lang's (C++, Java, C#, PHP, etc.), and I wrote this after reading a few tutorials.

It is an implementation of an Artificial System Clock (ASC). The idea is that you will use the getSystemDate method of this class everywhere in your app. that gets the date/time directly. Then you can change the date-time context for the whole app. for testing purposes. When in "channel" mode, it will go fetch the date-time value from TimeChannels.com, so that you can integration-test with multiple interfacing apps. all on the same shared ASC value.

Here's the TimeChannels class I wrote in Ruby:

require 'date'

require 'net/http'

require 'open-uri'



class TimeChannels

  @@tcURL = "http://www.timechannels.com/GetChannel"

  @@tcURLms = "http://www.timechannels.com/GetChannelMS"

  @@tcAscState = "TimeChannels.state.Production"

  @@tcChannel = "0"

  @@tcAscDateTime = nil

  @@tcServiceURL = "http://www.timechannels.com/GetChannel"

  @@tcMillisecondMode = "false"





  def TimeChannels.setToProductionState

    @@tcAscState = "TimeChannels.state.Production"

  end





  def TimeChannels.setToStaticTestState(aDateTimeValue)

    @@tcAscState = "TimeChannels.state.TestDate"

    @@tcAscDateTime = aDateTimeValue

  end





  def TimeChannels.setToTestState(aChannel)

    @@tcAscState = "TimeChannels.state.TestChannel"

    @@tcChannel = aChannel

  end





  def TimeChannels.setToMillisecondMode()

    @@tcMillisecondMode = "true"

    @@tcServiceURL = @@tcURLms

  end





  def TimeChannels.setToStandardMode

    @@tcMillisecondMode = "false"

    @@tcServiceURL = @@tcURL

  end





  def TimeChannels.getSystemDate

    if @@tcAscState == "TimeChannels.state.Production"

      return DateTime.now

    end



    if @@tcAscState == "TimeChannels.state.TestDate"

      return @@tcAscDateTime

    end



    if @@tcAscState == "TimeChannels.state.TestChannel"

      return getChannelFromTimeChannelsService(@@tcChannel)

    end



    DateTime.now

  end





  def TimeChannels.getHTTPContent(url)

    #res = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(url))

    #data = res.body



    data = open(url).read

    data

  end





  def TimeChannels.getChannelFromTimeChannelsService(aChannel)

    url = @@tcServiceURL + "?channel=" + aChannel

    result = getHTTPContent(url)



    if (result.nil?) 

      return Time.now

    end



    if (@@tcMillisecondMode == "true")

      retVal = result

      #retVal = DateTime.parse(result)

    else

      retVal = DateTime.parse(result)

    end

      

    retVal

  end



end

Many thanks in advance to all who reply...

John

Re: Artificial System Clock Code review critique
 

I have a suggestion, I think your code need a exception handler when your internet connection is lost.

Re: Artificial System Clock Code review critique
 

Though I'm no Ruby expert, here are a few suggestions:

if (result.nil?)

  return Time.now

end

can also be written as:

return Time.now if result.nil?

= Instead of using

@@tcMillisecondMode = "false"

, why not just use

@@tcMillisecondMode = false

?

= Your ASC state can be better represented using Ruby Symbols.

= In Ruby in absence of a

return

statement, the value of the last expression evaluated is returned hence the method:

def TimeChannels.getHTTPContent(url)

    data = open(url).read

    data

end

can be replaced by:

def TimeChannels.getHTTPContent(url)

    open(url).read

end

though as already mentioned, handling exceptions in case establishment of a connection fails should come first.

= The Ruby way of naming variables and methods is *not* to use camelCase but use under_scores; though it's a matter of taste. However it pays to follow and use the conventions used by the community in general to facilitate easier understanding of others' code and vice-versa.

In case you require a more in-depth review, feel free to post your code on the official ruby forums and you'll surely get more feedback.

HTH
-sos