Coding Conventions

The following snippet (full file here) demonstrates many of the coding conventions within Sensus. These must be strictly adhered to.

The start of every source code file must contain the following copyright notice:

// Copyright 2014 The Rector & Visitors of the University of Virginia
//
// Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
// you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
// You may obtain a copy of the License at
//
//     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
//
// Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
// distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
// WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
// See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
// limitations under the License.

Next is a blank line followed by the using declarations:

using System;
...

Next are the namespace and class declarations (note the upper-camel-casing):

namespace Sensus.Android
{
    public class AndroidSensusServiceHelper : SensusServiceHelper
    {

Next are any static or const fields, which must be in all capital letters:

        public const string MAIN_ACTIVITY_WILL_BE_SET = "MAIN-ACTIVITY-WILL-BE-SET";
        ...

Next are any private members, which must be explicitly denoted as private, use lower-camel-casing, and be prefixed with an underscore:

        private AndroidSensusService _service;
        ...

Next are any properties, which must use upper-camel-casing and be identical to the private member except without the underscore:

        [JsonIgnore]
        public AndroidSensusService Service
        {
            get { return _service; }
        }
        ...

Next are any constructors:

        public AndroidSensusServiceHelper()
        {
            _mainActivityWait = new ManualResetEvent(false);   
        }

Next are any methods:

        protected override void InitializeXamarinInsights()
        {
            Insights.Initialize(XAMARIN_INSIGHTS_APP_KEY, Application.Context);  // can't reference _service here since this method is called from the base class constructor, before the service is set.
        }
        ... 
    }
}

Some miscellaneous conventions and guidelines:

• Always reference private variables within a class rather than their properties.
• Use grammatically appropriate variable names. For example, a list of string objects representing names should be declared as List<string> names, and the associated foreach statement should be foreach(string name in names).
• Do not update packages while you work. Such changes will often create conflicts with other developers.
• Do not submit code that is commented out.