Code review goals

• Teach best practices.
  • Students should not only learn but also demonstrate their understanding of best software practices by delivering code that meets high standards.
• Produce quality product for clients and next batch of students.
  • Spark wants continued collaboration with clients.
  • Students should be able to focus on their contribution rather than fixing previous code.

What to do when reviewing a pull requests

• Ensure pull request is complete. A complete pull request;

  • Must have a clear description of feature or bug.

  • Should include a gif/video of before and after feature was added, if it introduces visual features. Eg:

  • Contains code that all contributes to a single feature.
  • Must not be commits behind main branch (or the branch it’s about to merge into).
  • Passes all CI/CD checks.

• Provide actionable comments. State directly what should be changed and why Egs:

  • Instead of “I am not clear on what’s going here”, you could comment “group lines 23-65 into a function “calculateCoordinatesOfScalingBox()” and move it to a utils.ts file to make your code more readable”.

  • Instead of “Your branch doesn’t seem to be up to date”, you could comment “Merge with main to get latest changes”.

• Run branch locally to verify functionality.
• Approve asap.

Code review checklist

• Project structure

  • Organized according to conventions of frameworks used. - Egs Nextjs
  • Make use of folders. Eg folder-structure-for-modern-web-applications
  • Folders and files should have a consistent naming convention.

• Code organization

  • On frontend, adhere to Atomic Design as much as possible.
  • Repeated code should be made into functions.
  • Files shouldn’t be too long.
    • Most files should be less than 100 lines. Ideally, no file should exceed 400 lines.
• File formatting
  • Code should be formatted using a formatting tool.
    • Stick to prettier.
  • Files should have a consistent naming convention.

• Git management

  • Has gitignore file.
  • Node_modules, env files, build folders/files (dist etc), log files etc should not be pushed to remote repo.
• ReadMe
  • Changes should be reflected in README.md
    • A code change that contradicts the readme, makes it obsolete or insufficient, should be accompanied by changes in readme.
    • “Best time to add documentation is before implementation. Worst time is after implementation. At the very least, document during implementation.”
• Logging
  • Errors should be logged with console.error .
  • Remove all console.logs. They are not necessary in a well organized, commented, documented codebase.

• Common code smells

  • Unused imports, packages and functions should be removed.
  • Long, repeated If else blocks should be replaced with a switch statement or a map.
  • Magic numbers should be replaced with named constants placed at the top of a file or in a constants.ts/config.ts file, accompanied by necessary comments.
  • Code blocks prone to unpredictable errors should be placed in a try catch block or handled gracefully.
    • Eg are file i/o, network requests, etc
  • if else should be simplified with ternary statements where possible.

  if(age >= 18 ){
     const message =  "You are an adult";
   }else{
     const message =   "You are not an adult yet";
   }
  // can be replaced with
  
   const message = (age >= 18) ? "You are an adult" : "You are not an adult yet";
  
  

  • See here for more examples of code smells.

• Common React pitfalls

  • Elements in a list should have keys.

  export const DatasetsView: React.FC<DatasetsViewProps> = ({ datasets, additionalColumns }) => {
    return (
    <>
        {datasets.map((dataset: Dataset) => (				 // add a key to each elements in list
        <Accordion key={dataset._id} disableGutters>
            <AccordionSummary expandIcon={<ExpandMore />}>
            …
            </AccordionSummary>
        </Accordion>
        ))}
    </>
    );
    };
  
  

  • Custom hooks
    • Code that resides in a hook (eg useState, useEffect, useCallback etc) and is repeated in multiple files should be refactored into a custom hook.

• Nits:

  • Comments should add context rather than repeat code.
  • There shouldn’t be confusing spelling mistakes in variable/function names.
  • Variable and function names must be concise yet descriptive enough.

    function getId() {...} // ok
    function getUserId() {...} //better
  
    const duration = videoRef.current.duration; //ok
    const videoDuration = videoRef.current.duration; //better
  

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