Best practices for Creating Rules & Constants

 

 Best Practices for Appian developers

Appian best practices are like a check list, use these checklists at different stages of your development cycle as described to ensure application success and reduce technical risk. Each section provides guidance for when and how often you should use these.

6.Best practices for Creating Rules & Constants :-

Rules and constants share the same namespace, all names must be unique in the environment, not the application.

1.Constants :-

1.Follow the naming convention for Constant as APPPREFIX_ALL_CAPS. (Example: APP_CONSTANT_VALUE)

2.DO NOT name constant with existing Appian functions.

3.All Constants should have proper descriptions.

4.All Constants are organized into application specific folders

5.Mention environment specific constants while creating Constants

6.All Constants should inherit security from the folders.

2.Expression Rules :-

7.Follow the naming convention for Expression Rules as APPPREFIX_camelCase () along with valid description. (Example: <APP>_formApplicationId)

8.DO NOT name Expression Rules with existing Appian functions.

9.Organize the rules into application specific folders.

10.Use comments /**/ to describe the rules logic.

11.Configure Test cases for all expression rules

12.Avoid using the ‘and() ‘ function to group assertions together for easy debugging

13.Update test cases every time the expression rule changes.

14.Analyze the performance view of the Expression rules to optimize the code.

15.Use Query Entity to fetch the specific columns with necessary selection/aggregation from DB

16.Query filters in queryEntity should have null check before executing.

3.Interfaces :- 

17.Save useful default test inputs for each interface; Save at least 2 test cases for each expression rule

18.For every rule that is edited/created, use dependency checker to ensure that everywhere the rule is called, all inputs are specified

19.All rules are properly formatted and readable.

20.Leave comments in the SAIL for every major code change made

4.Decision :-

21.Specify the values for all the inputs in decision

22.DO NOT delete Decision Objects

23.Output Objects of the decisions should present in the each environment.

24.Use decisions for Complex or Business specific Logic implementation.