The challenge

At some point in a web project a underlying system, rest API, etc. will not be available and you must make some hacks and or fake code to enable development to continue.

But how do you ensure that the hacks and or fake code never make it into production? Typically  TODO’s, comments, PBI’s etc. are used, but to be honest I have never liked doing that.

Especially in this case as the OAuth Authorization flow was not available, so I had to fake the authentication.

Solution

Introducing the [Hack] custom attribute. It adds the ability to add the hack attribute to classes, properties, and methods.

• When the code is compiled to Debug–  it generates a warning,
  • So the code compiles and can be deployed
• When the code is compiled to Release – it generates an errorSo the code cannot compile, and can’t be deployed to production.

In out setup for local development, continues integration and our internal development & test server we build for debug. For pre-production & production we build for release.

Therefore I could relax knowing that the hacks could not make it into production.

The Code

namespace Foundation.Diagnostics.Infrastructure
{
#if !DEBUG
[Obsolete("Hack code is still present", true)]
#endif
#if DEBUG
[Obsolete("Hack code is still present")]
#endif

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.All)]
public class HackAttribute : Attribute
{
public HackAttribute(string message)
{
Message = message;
}

public string Message { get; }
}
}

It was actually quite simple to achieve by using the Obsolete attribute and the using preprocessor directives, to control if the Obsolete attribute should couase a warning or error, depending if the build was debug or release.

Hope this helps, Alan