Refactoring with Codemods to Automate API Changes
(martinfowler.com)
Refactoring is something developers do all the time—making code easier to understand, maintain, and extend. While IDEs can handle simple refactorings with just a few keystrokes, things get tricky when you need to apply changes across large or distributed codebases, especially those you don’t fully control. That’s where codemods come in. By using Abstract Syntax Trees (AST), codemods allow you to automate large-scale code changes with precision and minimal effort, making them especially useful when dealing with breaking API changes.
Refactoring is something developers do all the time—making code easier to understand, maintain, and extend. While IDEs can handle simple refactorings with just a few keystrokes, things get tricky when you need to apply changes across large or distributed codebases, especially those you don’t fully control. That’s where codemods come in. By using Abstract Syntax Trees (AST), codemods allow you to automate large-scale code changes with precision and minimal effort, making them especially useful when dealing with breaking API changes.