this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
25 points (90.3% liked)

Programming

17444 readers
187 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev



founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I just recently started documenting my code as it helped me. Though I feel like my documentations are a bit too verbose and probably unneeded on obvious parts of my code.

So I started commenting above a few lines of code and explain it in a short sentence what I do or why I do that, then leave a space under it for the next line so it is easier to read.

What do you think about this?

Edit: real code example from one of my projects:

async def discord_login_callback(request: HttpRequest) -> HttpResponseRedirect:
    async def exchange_oauth2_code(code: str) -> str | None:
        data = {
            'grant_type': 'authorization_code',
            'code': code,
            'redirect_uri': OAUTH2_REDIRECT_URI
        }
        headers = {
            'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'
        }
        async with httpx.AsyncClient() as client:
            # get user's access and refresh tokens
            response = await client.post(f"{BASE_API_URI}/oauth2/token", data=data, headers=headers, auth=(CLIENT_ID, CLIENT_SECRET))
            if response.status_code == 200:
                access_token, refresh_token = response.json()["access_token"], response.json()["refresh_token"]

                # get user data via discord's api
                user_data = await client.get(f"{BASE_API_URI}/users/@me", headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {access_token}"})
                user_data = user_data.json()
                user_data.update({"access_token": access_token, "refresh_token": refresh_token}) # add tokens to user_data

                return user_data, None
            else:
                # if any error occurs, return error context
                context = generate_error_dictionary("An error occurred while trying to get user's access and refresh tokens", f"Response Status: {response.status_code}\nError: {response.content}")
                return None, context

    code = request.GET.get("code")
    user, context = await exchange_oauth2_code(code)

    # login if user's discord user data is returned
    if user:
        discord_user = await aauthenticate(request, user=user)
        await alogin(request, user=discord_user, backend="index.auth.DiscordAuthenticationBackend")
        return redirect("index")
    else:
        return render(request, "index/errorPage.html", context)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] theherk@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I rarely read comments in code, that is from within source code anyway. I of course write comments explaining the behavior of public facing interfaces and otherwise where they serve to generate documentation, but very rarely otherwise. And I use that generated documentation. So in a roundabout way I do read comments but outside of the code base.

For instance I might use godoc to get a general idea of components but if I’m in the code I’ll be reading the code instead.

As others have said, your code generally but not always should clearly express what it does. It is fine to comment why you have decided to implement something in a way that isn’t immediately clear.

I’m not saying others don’t read comments in code; some do. I just never find myself looking at docs in code. The most important skill I have cultivated over the decades has been learning to read and follow the actual code itself.