Article
Eduard Lebedyuk · Oct 6, 2016 3m read

Tips & Tricks - Automatic removal of system methods from codebase

Recently I wrote about automatic removal of system methods from the codebase.

Today, I'm ready to present you a working solution (codename: SMR) for this task.

What it does?

For each class you wish to process SMR does the following

  1. Replaces .$ with .<something of your choice> (.% by default)
  2. (Optonally) Capitalizes the letter after the $
  3. Replaces references from %Object to %DynamicObject and so on

User guide

Import classes and call one of the entry points, depending on what classes you want to process. There are entry points for:

  • all user classes
  • subclasses of some class
  • classes with name matching LIKE SQL condition

Entry points are the following methods:

set st = ##class(SMR.Main).RemoveFromAllClasses(Replace, Capitalize)
set st = ##class(SMR.Main).RemoveFromSubclassesOf(Class, Replace, Capitalize)
set st = ##class(SMR.Main).RemoveFromMatchingClasses(Mask, Replace, Capitalize)

Arguments:

  • Replace - what to replace $ with (% by default but, for example, you can specify $$$ if you have macros)
  • Capitalize - capitalize the letter after $ (boolean, yse by default)
  • Class - class which subclasses the utility would try to convert (including the class)
  • Mask - passed into the SQL query SELECT ID FROM %Dictionary.ClassDefinition Where ID LIKE ?

More throughout documentation is available in the code.

Example

Here's SMR.A class

Class SMR.A
{
ClassMethod A()
{
    set obj = ##class(%Library.Object).%New()
    set obj = {}.$fromJSON("{""a"":1}")
    write obj.$toJSON()
}
}

If you don't care about 2016.1 compatibility, you can just call SMR with the defaults, like this:

write ##class(SMR.Main).RemoveFromMatchingClasses("SMR.A")

And SMR.A class would look like this:

Class SMR.A
{
ClassMethod A()
{
    set obj = ##class(%Library.DynamicObject).%New()
    set obj = {}.%FromJSON("{""a"":1}")
    w obj.%ToJSON()
}
}

If, however you do care about 2016.1 compatibility, you can use macro approach as described here. Lets say we want to replace $<system method name> with $$$json<System method name>. To do that, call SMR like this:

write ##class(SMR.Main).RemoveFromMatchingClasses("SMR.A", "$$$json")

It yields:

Class SMR.A
{

ClassMethod A()
{
    set obj = ##class(%Library.DynamicObject).%New()
    set obj = {}.$$$jsonFromJSON("{""a"":1}")
    write obj.$$$jsonToJSON()
}
}

If you don't want to capitalize the first letter of system method name, you can provide Capitalize argument:

write ##class(SMR.Main).RemoveFromMatchingClasses("SMR.A", "$$$json", 0)

It yields:

Class SMR.A
{

ClassMethod A()
{
    set obj = ##class(%Library.DynamicObject).%New()
    set obj = {}.$$$jsonfromJSON("{""a"":1}")
    write obj.$$$jsontoJSON()
}
}

Notes

  • Call TSTART before calling SMR, then view results in Studio and call TCOMMIT or TROLLBACK to finalize or remove the changes
  • Carefully check resulting commit. This tool is NOT a syntax analyzer of any kind, it just uses $find and regexp
  • $compose/%Compose method is unavailable in 2016.2. Don't forget to remove it
  • SMR can be easily  modified to do some general purpose find-replacing for arbitrary group of classes
  • Works only in a current namespace
  • Works only in 2016.2 Field Test or later
  • SMR does not compile processed classes

Links

4
0 584
Discussion (5)3
Log in or sign up to continue

Sorry if this is a dumb question - what does SMR stand for?

Eduard, if I have understood this correctly,  this is going to only for %Library.DynamicObject right? Not for any other classes, correct? Your posts title looks generic, is that true?

The title says, removal tool for System Methods. While such methods appeared only in JSON classes, like %DynamicObject which you mentioned. But this tool scans all code in all classes, for using these methods, and change it.