Towards a catalog of aspect-oriented refactorings

Abstract

In this paper, we present a collection of aspect-oriented refactorings covering both the extraction of aspects from objectoriented legacy code and the subsequent tidying up of the resulting aspects. In some cases, this tidying up entails the replacement of the original implementation with a different, centralized design, made possible by modularization. The collection of refactorings includes the extraction of common code in various aspects into abstract superaspects. We review the traditional object-oriented code smells in the light of aspectorientation and propose some new smells for the detection of crosscutting concerns. In addition, we propose a new code smell that is specific to aspects.

Extracting and Evolving Code in Product Lines with Aspect-Oriented Programming

“…AOP refactorings have also been described elsewhere [23,16]. The former proposes a catalog for object-to-aspect and aspect-to-aspect refactorings, whereas the latter provides an abstract representation of object-to-aspect refactorings as roles.…”

Refactoring a Java code base to AspectJ: an illustrative example

“…Even Eckel's clever design cannot achieve obliviousness [2] from pattern roles. Participant classes betray the Double Personality smell: [13] each participant contains code related to two concerns -the primary concern and the role in the pattern. Any method of the subject (Flower) performing an interesting operation must still include code relative to its role in the pattern.…”

“…The two alternative paths start in the second phase. The first path comprises three phases, each relating to a composite refactoring [13] prescribing the use of others: The eclipse project includes code snapshots presenting the code in various structural forms, always in a compilable and testable state. These are stored in the following folder hierarchy:…”

“…Under this assumption, OO code betrays code smells [3], which can be removed through AO refactorings. We undertook refactoring experiments on Java code bases in order to derive interesting refactorings [12,13]. In this paper, we illustrate results derived from implementations [6] of the Gang-of-Four (GoF) design patterns [4] in Java and AspectJ.…”

“…We present an initial validation effort for the collection of AO refactorings presented in [13] and documented in [11,12], and to illustrate issues that arise when refactoring Java code bases to AspectJ. We describe a complete refactoring process using 17 of the refactorings.…”