So we run a code quality tool called reek once in a while as part of our project. The tool basically looks for code smells and reports them. Here, we observed that we get "Duplication" smell every time we try to access a key in params
more than once (As if we are making a method-call twice with same parameters or we are duplicating an if condition etc). However, params
is just a Hash
, right? Other hashes don't get duplication smell when their keys are accessed more than once.
Why is this so? What are params
exactly? Does it make sense to cache params
in a local variable then use them? Will it help or its the same? Or is there something wrong with the tool? Help!
With the current version it's best to run Reek only on your app/models folder, because it raises false positives against views and controllers.
params is a kind of DTO (data transfer object) close to the system boundary, and so its characteristics should be different than regular code. But Reek doesn't know that (yet). I plan to improve Reek in the near future so that it plays better with Rails. For now though, your best bet is to restrict it to looking at app/models (and maybe app/helpers and lib).