Question: How can I make use of the stats?

[gopalkriagg]

For example, these are my stats:

How can I use these stats other than satisfy my curiosity?

• It shows how many LoC I have written which is indicator of how much work I have put in the project.
• Is it an indicator of code quality?
• Can I use these to improve my code?
• What does good stats look like? (e.g. good Methods/Class ratio etc.)
• What other questions do these stats answer?

Thank you for making interesting package!

[stefanzweifel]

That's acutally a very good question.

I think the output stats provides should not be taken too seriously. Meaning it shouldn't dictate how you write your code.

laravel-stats is basically a port of rake stats from Ruby On Rails. I've got inspired by this tweet as I thought it would be great to see, how many lines of code I've written for each component.
So it's basically just a dashboard which tells you, how many Controller classes you have and how the ratio between methods per class and lines of code per class.

Saying that a project has "good code" based on the average number of methods per class is probably not the best approach.

For me personally, good codes is:

• easy to read and understand (use clear variable and method names; no abbreviations)
• tested by Unit and/or Integration tests
• solves the problem in a way so that the logic can be easily extended in the future
• is maintainable over many months/years

But that's how I see what good code is. Everyone is different and has other standards (DRY, SOLID just to mentiond a few).

---

Regarding to stats, the only value I have an eye on, is the Code/Test ratio. It tells me, how many lines of code I've written for the app, and how many for my tests.
If my ratio is < 0.5 I should probably write more tests, as I seem to have more application code than test code.
A ratio > 1 is an indicator, that I have a lot of test code. Maybe it's time to invest some time into refactoring tests and make them smaller…

Here are two examples of the stats output of real world applications I'm currently working on. (I've blacked out some custom components)

Output of a smaller app

+----------------------------+---------+---------+---------------+-------+------+-------------+
| Name                       | Classes | Methods | Methods/Class |   LoC | LLoC | LLoC/Method |
+----------------------------+---------+---------+---------------+-------+------+-------------+
| Commands                   |       8 |      33 |          4.13 |   831 |  157 |        4.76 |
| ❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙ |       5 |      60 |            12 |  1194 |   61 |        1.02 |
| ❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙❙  |      60 |     360 |             6 |  2837 |  360 |           1 |
| Controllers                |      14 |      21 |           1.5 |   567 |   76 |        3.62 |
| Jobs                       |       3 |      12 |             4 |   304 |   57 |        4.75 |
| Middlewares                |       9 |       5 |          0.56 |   214 |   26 |         5.2 |
| Migrations                 |      16 |      32 |             2 |   733 |  234 |        7.31 |
| Models                     |      10 |       6 |           0.6 |   257 |   31 |        5.17 |
| Query Objects              |       4 |       8 |             2 |   184 |   21 |        2.63 |
| Requests                   |       6 |      12 |             2 |   255 |   12 |           1 |
| Resources                  |       6 |       8 |          1.33 |   192 |   12 |         1.5 |
| Rules                      |       2 |       8 |             4 |   128 |   24 |           3 |
| Seeders                    |       6 |       6 |             1 |   131 |   13 |        2.17 |
| Service Providers          |       6 |      10 |          1.67 |   198 |   13 |         1.3 |
| PHPUnit Tests              |      30 |     111 |           3.7 |  4082 |  738 |        6.65 |
| Other                      |      35 |     127 |          3.63 |  1774 |  250 |        1.97 |
+----------------------------+---------+---------+---------------+-------+------+-------------+
| Total                      |     220 |     819 |          3.72 | 13881 | 2085 |        2.55 |
+----------- Code LLoC: 926 • Test LLoC: 738 • Code/Test Ratio: 1:0.8 • Routes: 34 -----------+

The app is fairly small with only 2085 logical lines of code and 34 routes. The code/test ratio is quite good with 0.8.
Controllers are quite small with just 1.5 methods per class.

Output of a large app

+-------------------+---------+---------+---------------+--------+-------+-------------+
| Name              | Classes | Methods | Methods/Class |    LoC |  LLoC | LLoC/Method |
+-------------------+---------+---------+---------------+--------+-------+-------------+
| Commands          |      55 |     115 |          2.09 |   3143 |   724 |         6.3 |
| Controllers       |     144 |     339 |          2.35 |   7527 |  2308 |        6.81 |
| Event Listeners   |      17 |      37 |          2.18 |    698 |   140 |        3.78 |
| Events            |      15 |      15 |             1 |    382 |   113 |        7.53 |
| Jobs              |      43 |     129 |             3 |   3144 |   948 |        7.35 |
| Mails             |      21 |      48 |          2.29 |    986 |   239 |        4.98 |
| Middlewares       |      14 |       9 |          0.64 |    386 |    72 |           8 |
| Migrations        |     211 |     420 |          1.99 |   9523 |  3309 |        7.88 |
| Models            |      93 |     424 |          4.56 |   6700 |  1313 |         3.1 |
| Notifications     |      11 |      43 |          3.91 |    768 |   133 |        3.09 |
| Nova Actions      |       1 |       2 |             2 |     70 |    25 |        12.5 |
| Nova Filters      |       2 |       4 |             2 |     77 |    10 |         2.5 |
| Nova Resources    |      21 |     108 |          5.14 |   2153 |   294 |        2.72 |
| Policies          |      18 |     104 |          5.78 |   1568 |   220 |        2.12 |
| Requests          |      29 |      79 |          2.72 |   1654 |   188 |        2.38 |
| Resources         |      34 |      90 |          2.65 |   1987 |   363 |        4.03 |
| Rules             |       3 |      10 |          3.33 |    211 |    68 |         6.8 |
| Seeders           |      16 |      17 |          1.06 |   4509 |   342 |       20.12 |
| Service Providers |       9 |      28 |          3.11 |    664 |   185 |        6.61 |
| PHPUnit Tests     |     301 |    1603 |          5.33 |  43569 | 13290 |        8.29 |
| Other             |     174 |     875 |          5.03 |  11389 |  2951 |        3.37 |
+-------------------+---------+---------+---------------+--------+-------+-------------+
| Total             |    1232 |    4499 |          3.65 | 101108 | 27235 |        6.05 |
+------ Code LLoC: 13616 • Test LLoC: 13290 • Code/Test Ratio: 1:1 • Routes: 364 ------+

This app is a bit bigger with 27235 logical lines of code and over 350 routes. We have a code/test ratio of 1:1 which indicates to me, that we have written roughly the same amount of application code as test code.

Knowing the app, I know that our tests are quite long/big as we have to do a lot of world building in it. It's definitely time for a refactoring.

---

To answer your questions:

Is it an indicator of code quality?

No, I wouldn't use the output of stats to indicate code quality.

Can I use these to improve my code?

Yes. If, for example, you see that the average number of lines of code per method is over 20 I would digg deeper and want to see which classes have methods which are so long. (using the -v option).
Could the classes be refactored to have shorter methods?

What does good stats look like? (e.g. good Methods/Class ratio etc.)

I would say a good stat is approaching a code/test ratio of 1:1.
A ratio below 0.5 indicates to me, that there's a lot more app than test code.

What other questions do these stats answer?

I couldn't think of any 😅

[gopalkriagg]

Thank you @stefanzweifel for giving such a detailed answer ❤️ I definitely need to write more tests! 😆
Once again thank you for making such a useful and interesting package!