Task 6: Refactor to DRY the Support Classes

Warning

Due to the fact that this code is being auto-graded as you work through it, make sure that you use any and all names for classes, variables, methods, etc provided to you in these directions.

Review the code in the Employer, Location, CoreCompetency, and PositionType classes. What similarities do you see?

There is a fair amount of repetition between the classes. As a good coder, anytime you find yourself adding identical code in multiple locations you should consider how to streamline the process. DRY = “Don’t Repeat Yourself”.

Create a Base Class

Let’s move all of the repeated code into a separate class. We will then have Employer, Location, CoreCompetency, and PositionType inherit this common code.

  1. Create a new class called JobField.
  2. Consider the following questions to help you decide what code to put in the JobField class:
    1. What fields do ALL FOUR of the classes have in common?
    2. Which constructors are the same in ALL FOUR classes?
    3. Which custom methods are identical in ALL of the classes?
  3. In JobField, declare each of the common class members.
  4. Code the constructors.
  5. Add in any inherited method overrides.
  6. Finally, to prevent the creation of a JobField object, make this class abstract.

Extend JobField into Employer

Now that you have the common code located in the JobField file, we can modify the other classes to reference this shared code. Let’s begin with Employer.

  1. Modify line 4 to extend the JobField class into Employer.
  2. Next, remove any code in Employer that matches code from JobField (e.g. the Id and Value properties and the nextId field are shared).
  3. Remove any of the methods that are identical.
  4. The empty constructor is shared, but not the second. Replace the two constructors with the following:
    4
5
6
7
8
9

    public class Employer : JobField
 {
     public Employer(string value) : base(value)
     {
     }
}
  5. Rerun your unit tests to verify your refactored code.

Finish DRYing Your Code

Repeat the process above for the Location, CoreCompetency, and PositionType classes.

Rerun your unit tests to verify that your classes and methods still work.

Run TestTas6 tests

Uncomment the tests inside the TestTask6class. Look for the TODOs to help you find the multi-line comments marks.

Run your TestTask6 unit tests.

Refactor your code as needed. This is the last set of tests! Congrats!

Submit your assignment once you have passed all of Task 6’s auto-graded unit tests.

Tip

Now would be a good time to save, commit, and push your work up to GitHub.

On to your final steps .