refactoring best practices for both PHP and Ruby on Rails

Question

Hi,

Wondering if someone can suggest a refactoring 'best practice' or more ideally a "check-list" that we can go through and refactor against common issues.

Some of these ideas were pretty good: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780321620293

But looking for more.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I find the best place to start is Martin Fowler's original book, "Refactoring".

See http://martinfowler.com/books.html for the book, and http://www.refactoring.com/ for a web version (basically).

The most useful thing is the list of 'refactorings' available at http://www.refactoring.com/catalog/index.html

This lists common issues and some of the techniques you can use to refactor them :)