Code Analyzers Added to AWS SDK for .NET

One of the most exciting Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 features is the ability to have static analysis run on your code as you write it. This allows you to flag code that is syntactically correct but will cause errors when run.

We have added static analyzers to the latest AWS SDK NuGet packages for each of the version 3 service packages. The analyzers will check the values set on the SDK classes to make sure they are valid. For example, for a property that takes in a string, the analyzer will verify the string meets the minimum and maximum length. An analyzer will also run a regular expression to make sure it meets the right pattern.

Let’s say I wanted to create an Amazon DynamoDB table. Table names must be at least three characters and cannot contain characters like @ or #. So if I tried to create a table with the name of “@work”, the service would fail the request. The analyzers will detect the issue, display an alert in the code editor, and put warnings in the error list before I even attempt to call the service.

Setup

The analyzers are set up in your project when you add the NuGet reference. To see the installed analyzers, go to the project properties, choose Code Analysis, and then choose the Open button.

The code analyzers can also be disabled here.

Feedback

We hope this is just the start of what we can do with the code analysis features in Visual Studio. If can suggest other common pitfalls that can be avoided through the use of these analyzers, let us know. If you have other ideas or feedback, open an issue in our GitHub repository.