How to Refactoring in Eclipse for Selenium automation

8. Refactoring

Refactoring is the process of restructuring the code without changing his behavior. For example renaming a Java class or method is a refactoring activity.

Eclipse supports simple refactoring activities, for example renaming or moving. For example you can select your class, right click on it and select Refactor → Rename to rename your class or method. Eclipse will make sure that all calls in your Workspace to your your class or method will also be renamed.

The following shows a screenshot for calling the "Rename" refactoring on a class.

For the next examples change the code of "MyFirstClass.java" to the following.

   
package de.vogella.eclipse.ide.first;

public class MyFirstClass {

 public static void main(String[] args) {
  System.out.println("Hello Eclipse!");
  int sum = 0;
  for (int i = 0; i <= 100; i++) {
   sum += i;
  }
  System.out.println(sum);
 }
}

  

Another useful refactoring is to mark code and create a method from the selected code. For this mark the coding of the "for" loop, right click and select Refactoring → Extract Method. Use "calculateSum" as name of the new method.

The resulting class should look like the following.

   
package de.vogella.eclipse.ide.first;

public class MyFirstClass {

 public static void main(String[] args) {
  System.out.println("Hello Eclipse!");
  int sum = 0;
  sum = calculateSum(sum);
  System.out.println(sum);
 }

 private static int calculateSum(int sum) {
  for (int i = 0; i <= 100; i++) {
   sum += i;
  }
  return sum;
 }
}

  

You can also extract strings and create constants from them. Mark for this example "Hello Eclipse!", right click on it and select Refactor → Extract Constant. Name your new constant "HELLO".

The resulting class should look like the following.

   
package de.vogella.eclipse.ide.first;

public class MyFirstClass {

 private static final String HELLO = "Hello Eclipse!";

 public static void main(String[] args) {
  System.out.println(HELLO);
  int sum = 0;
  sum = calculateSum(sum);
  System.out.println(sum);
 }

 private static int calculateSum(int sum) {
  for (int i = 0; i <= 100; i++) {
   sum += i;
  }
  return sum;
 }
}

  

Eclipse has much more refactorings, in most cases you should get an idea of the performed action by the naming of the refactoring operation.