Can a C# method chain be "too long"?
- by ccornet
Not in terms of readability, naturally, since you can always arrange the separate methods into separate lines. Rather, is it dangerous, for any reason, to chain an excessively large number of methods together? I use method chaining primarily to save space on declaring individual one-use variables, and traditionally using return methods instead of methods that modify the caller. Except for string methods, those I kinda chain mercilessly. In any case, I worry sometimes about the impact of using exceptionally long method chains all in one line.
Let's say I need to update the value of one item based on someone's username. Unfortunately, the shortest method to retrieve the correct user looks something like the following.
SPWeb web = GetWorkflowWeb();
SPList list2 = web.Lists["Wars"];
SPListItem item2 = list2.GetItemById(3);
SPListItem item3 = item2.GetItemFromLookup("Armies", "Allied Army");
SPUser user2 = item2.GetSPUser("Commander");
SPUser user3 = user2.GetAssociate("Spouse");
string username2 = user3.Name;
item1["Contact"] = username2;
Everything with a 2 or 3 lasts for only one call, so I might condense it as the following (which also lets me get rid of a would-be-superfluous 1):
SPWeb web = GetWorkflowWeb();
item["Contact"] = web.Lists["Armies"]
.GetItemById(3)
.GetItemFromLookup("Armies", "Allied Army")
.GetSPUser("Commander")
.GetAssociate("Spouse")
.Name;
Admittedly, it looks a lot longer when it is all in one line and when you have int.Parse(ddlArmy.SelectedValue.CutBefore(";#", false)) instead of 3. Nevertheless, this is one of the average lengths of these chains, and I can easily foresee some of exceptionally longer counts. Excluding readability, is there anything I should be worried about for these 10+ method chains? Or is there no harm in using really really long method chains?
