Best practices for writing scripts

[Ilya Turov]

Hello.

Scripting for jira is my first major programming experience, so if this discussion is too amateurish - please bear with me.

The situation is the following - whenever I write a script with several functions in it and with a need to access let's say customFieldManager in some of them, I have to define this customFieldManager in every function:

def customFieldManager = ComponentAccessor.customFieldManager

It's not that big of a problem, but I feel like there's a better way.

So far I've found three (second while writing this):
    1. dummy Constants class:

import static Constants.*
class Constants {
  static final MYCONSTANT = "foobar"
}

does what it is - creates a dummy class where you can put your global scoped variables

    2. @Field annotation:

import groovy.transform.Field
@Field List awe = [1, 2, 3]
def awesum() { awe.sum() }
assert awesum() == 6

does pretty much the same as method one, just more elegantly I think

    3. Own helper class:
much like method one, writing a dummy class, but making it in a separate file with the help of Scriptrunner's Script Roots functionality:

package util.managers

import com.atlassian.jira.component.ComponentAccessor

class managers {
  static final customFieldManager = ComponentAccessor.customFieldManager
  //all the other components I use frequently
}

so I can access customFieldManager in any of my scripts by just importing this class:

import static util.managers.*

customFieldManager.getCustomFieldObject(12345)

  So, the question is, am I inventing a bicycle here, and do you have any tricks or hint to making your script better?

Thanks.

[Peter-Dave Sheehan]

I was hoping to see what others would say about this.

But I don't bother to store managers in different scripts. I try to only declare them if and where needed.

Only if I create a function or a group of related functions that I'd like to use in multiple instances do I group them together into a separate class. Like I have a util.WorkflowHelper class that has a few functions I want to be able to access quickly

If I have a script with multiple functions/methods, I'll either use the @Field annotation to define those managers at the top of the script so that they are available in each script methods. Or sometimes, I'll just declare them without the def prefix (which does something similar ... I'm not 100% clear on the distinction).

[Anton Chemlev - Toolstrek -]

The difference is very slight:

If you want a variable to become a field of the class without going into the Binding, you can use the @Field annotation.

Variable without type declaration becomes available in script binding (where, for example, "issue" variable live in SR post-functions, validators, etc.)

As for me, i prefer writing helpers as plugins in Java. It is easy to use them on different instances and it is protected from accidental changing by anybody who has access to file storage. But if you use script plugin for ScriptRunner no problem exists of course.