Question

I have a class that requires some of its methods to be called in a specific order. If these methods are called out of order then the object will stop working correctly. There are a few asserts in the methods to ensure that the object is in a valid state. What naming conventions could I use to communicate to the next person to read the code that these methods need to be called in a specific order?

It would be possible to turn this into one huge method, but huge methods are a great way to create problems. (There are a 2 methods than can trigger this sequence so 1 huge method would also result in duplication.)

It would be possible to write comments that explain that the methods need to be called in order but comments are less useful then clearly named methods.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Is it possible to refactor so (at least some of) the state from the first function is passed as a paramter to the second function, then it’s impossible to avoid?

Otherwise, if you have comments and asserts, you’re doing quite well.

However, “It would be possible to turn this into one huge method” makes it sound like the outside code doesn’t need to access the intermediate state in any way. If so, why not just make one public method, which calls several private methods successively? Something like:

FroblicateWeazel() {
   // Need to be in this order:
   FroblicateWeazel_Init();
   FroblicateWeazel_PerformCals();
   FroblicateWeazel_OutputCalcs();
   FroblicateWeazel_Cleanup();
}

That’s not perfect, but if the order is centralised to that one function, it’s fairly easy to see what order they should come in.