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Excellent finds the nasty lines in your code. It implements a comprehensive set of checks for possibly buggy parts of your app that would otherwise make it into your repo and eventually to the production server.

Example

Assume you have the following class definition,

class ShoppingBasket < ActiveRecord::Base

  def initialize(items = [])
    self.items = items
  end

end

then Excellent will immediately show you the bad parts about it:

$ excellent shopping_basket.rb 

  Excellent result:

  test.rb
    * Line   1: ShoppingBasket does not validate any attributes.
    * Line   1: ShoppingBasket defines initialize method.
    * Line   1: ShoppingBasket does not specify attr_accessible.

  Found 3 warnings.

Checks

Excellent has the following checks:

• AbcMetricMethodCheck – reports methods with an ABC metric score that is higher than the threshold.
• AssignmentInConditionalCheck – reports conditionals that test an assignment.
• CaseMissingElseCheck – reports case statements that don’t have an else clause.
• ClassLineCountCheck – reports classes which have more lines than the threshold.
• ClassNameCheck – reports classes with bad names.
• ControlCouplingCheck – reports methods that check the value of a parameter to decide which execution path to take.
• CyclomaticComplexityBlockCheck – reports blocks with a cyclomatic complexity metric score that is higher than the threshold.
• CyclomaticComplexityMethodCheck – reports methods with a cyclomatic complexity metric score that is higher than the threshold.
• EmptyRescueBodyCheck – reports empty rescue blocks.
• FlogBlockCheck – reports blocks with a Flog metric score that is higher than the threshold.
• FlogClassCheck – reports classes with a Flog metric score that is higher than the threshold.
• FlogMethodCheck – reports methods with a Flog metric score that is higher than the threshold.
• ForLoopCheck – reports code that uses for loops.
• MethodLineCountCheck – reports methods which have more lines than the threshold.
• MethodNameCheck – reports methods with bad names.
• ModuleLineCountCheck – reports modules which have more lines than the threshold.
• ModuleNameCheck – reports modules with bad names.
• NestedIteratorsCheck – reports nested iterators.
• ParameterNumberCheck – reports method and blocks that have more parameters than the threshold.
• SingletonVariableCheck – reports class variables.
• GlobalVariableCheck – reports global variables.

Rails specific Checks

Excellent also has some checks specific to Ruby on Rails:

• AttrAccessibleCheck – reports ActiveRecord models that do not specify attr_accessible.
• AttrProtectedCheck – reports ActiveRecord models that specify attr_protected.
• InstanceVarInPartialCheck – reports partials that use instance variables.
• ValidationsCheck – reports ActiveRecord models that don’t validate anything.
• CustomInitializeMethodCheck – reports ActiveRecord models that define a custom initialize method.
• ParamsHashInViewCheck – reports views (and partials) that access the params hash.
• SessionHashInViewCheck – reports views (and partials) that access the session hash.