Use 4D header macro to identify code blocks
Use 4D header macro to identify code blocks
Standard installation of 4Dv11 comes with a set of macros to use in design mode.
The one I find most useful is the Header macro. This macro takes my name, date time stamp, the method name and places it directly into whatever type of method I’m working in.
Most analogous to function/class/package documentation blocks in other languages, they are also an excellent starting point for other developers looking at your code. In 4D specifically, header blocks also serve as insurance against a corrupted structure file.
After repairing a corrupted structure file, orphan method(s) can appear without context. The orphan methods are not linked to the original code, and the type of method (object/form/project) and original method name are lost.
Worse, the repair process could have replaced the original code in it’s entirety with a comment “automatically repaired method“.
The method_name tag of the macro generates the text as shown in the title portion of the method editor. So a project method will render Method: Project_Method while form and object methods will render Method: Form Method [Table]Form and Method: Object Method [Table].Form.Object respectively.
A header documents all the missing information to find the original code location and the confidence to delete or restore the orphan code. Having the headers in place has definitely saved me lots of time analyzing and recovering from a structure corruption.
Example Macro
<macro name="Header">
<text>` ----------------------------------------------------
` User name (OS): <user_os/>
` Date and time: <date format="0"/>, <time format="0"/>
` ----------------------------------------------------
` Method: <method_name/>
` Description
` <caret/>
`
` Parameters
` ----------------------------------------------------
</text>
Note The above macro is formatted for v11. 4D v12 has // for commenting out lines
A tech tip on creating header content automatically.
Author’s Note
Initial md Generated using https://github.com/jsr6720/wordpress-html-scraper-to-md
Original Wordpress categories: [‘4D’]
Original Wordpress tags: “4D”, “4D”, “auto-comment”, “automatically repaired method”, “clean code”, “corrupt”, “macro”, “method header”, “orphan method”, “structure”
Original Wordpress comments: None
Significant revisions
tags: 2011, wordpress, txcowboycoder, 4D, error-handling, auto-comment, macros, clean-code
- May 6th, 2024 Converted to jekyll markdown format and copied to personal site
- Jun 2nd, 2011 Originally published on txcowboycoder wordpress site