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ariecattan edited this page Mar 3, 2021 · 1 revision

Coding Conventions

When working on a large project, especially when the code is shared by many people, it is important to conform to a unified and consistent coding style.

In this course, we require that you conform to the coding conventions suggested by Sun. All the code that you submit must conform to this coding style.

Note that some of the code we present in class, in the recitation session (tirgul) or in the assignment descriptions, do not follow these conventions. This is because our primary concern for this code is to be short, concise, and to fit on a small space. However, whenever we distribute files, they will follow the conventions.

Automatic code style checking with Checkstyle

In order to verify that your code follows the coding style, you can use the checkstyle software, with the configuration we provide. You can learn more about the checkstyle project here.

We will run automatic checktyle on all the code you submit. If the output of checkstyle indicate any deviation from the coding convention, we will reduce 10 points of your exercise grade.

Note that the checkstyle test is a necessity, but not a sufficiency - your code should also be well documented with comments as appropriate for being a readable code. In case your code will be manually inspected and the graders will face critical coding style problems, such as under-documented or ill-styled code (e.g. meaningless names or extremely long functions), we may reduce the grade more significantly and even give a grade of 0.

Please make sure to fix such errors BEFORE submitting the code, by verifying that you pass the checkstyle test with NO errors.

Using Checkstyle

Download the files:

The first file is the checkstyle software, the second is the configuration file we provide, specifying the coding convention we require. You can have a look at the content of biuoop.xml if you are interested.

Running checkstyle:

> java -jar checkstyle-5.7-all.jar -c biuoop.xml JavaFile1.java JavaFile2.java ...

The ... at the end indicate that you can add any number of java files. You can also specify many files using wildcards:

> java -jar checkstyle-5.7-all.jar -c biuoop.xml path/to/code/*.java

A small exercise

This small exercise will help you make sure you get checkstyle to work:

Run the following command

java -jar checkstyle-5.7-all.jar -c biuoop.xml FailingCheckstyleCode.java

You should see many checkstyle errors.

Fix the code so that checkstyle does not produce any more errors.

Checkstyle in IntelliJ

There is a plugin for integrating checkstyle in IntelliJ.

  1. Go to Settings (Ctrl + Alt + S) -> Plugins -> search for "checkstyle", install "CheckStyle-IDEA" and reload IntelliJ.
  2. Go to Settings -> Editor -> Inspections -> make sure you activate the Checkstyle inspection
  3. To configure the checkstyle with our configuration file (biuoop.xml): Settings -> Other Settings -> Checkstyle. There:
    • In Checkstyle version, select 8.0.
    • Under Configuration File, click Add (+). Provide a name (Description) and then Browse to the biuoop.xml configuration file we have provided. Click Next and Finish. Then, back in the Settings window, click Apply.

Now, you have a Checkstyle panel in the bottom pane. Click it. You can run a check on a certain file or all on all files in the project. You will see the problems also as code inspection inside the main window, similar to error corrections in Word. Hover the mouse on the highlighted code fragment to see the checkstyle error message.

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