Modern VBA Best Practices: Default Members

Today I learned that VB.NET does in fact support Default properties. For years I was under the impression that dismissing the Set keyword meant default members couldn’t possibly exist in .NET, and I was wrong: dismissing the Set keyword meant that parameterless default members couldn’t exist in .NET, but VB.NET can still implicitly invoke a Public Property Get Item(index) default member, just like its VB6 ancestor.

Rewind to their inception, and default members/properties have all the looks of a language feature that’s considered a nice convenient way to type code faster (in 20/20 hindsight, that was at the cost of readability). That’s why and how Debug.Print Application can compile, run, and output Microsoft Excel in the debug pane; it’s why and how an ADODB.Connection object and its ConnectionString properties can be impossible to tell apart… as a convenience; how a Range “is” its value(s), a TextBox “is” its text, or an OptionButton “is” True or False.

These are the modern-day considerations for VB.NET default properties (emphasis mine, .NET-specifics removed):

Default properties can result in a small reduction in source code-characters, but they can make your code more difficult to read. If the calling code is not familiar with your class […], when it makes a reference to the class […] name it cannot be certain whether that reference accesses the class […] itself, or a default property. This can lead to compiler errors or subtle run-time logic errors. […]
Because of these disadvantages, you should consider not defining default properties. For code readability, you should also consider always referring to all properties explicitly, even default properties.

I cannot think of a single valid reason for any of these considerations to not be applicable to modern VBA, or even VB6 code. VB.NET removed the need for a disambiguating Set keyword by making a parameterless default member throw a compiler error. For contrast consider this code, and imagine the Set keyword doesn’t exist:

Dim things(9)
things(0) = New Thing

If the Thing class defines a parameterless default member, then who can tell what’s at index 0 of the things array? A Thing object reference? A SomethingElse object reference? The String representation of a Thing instance? 42?

Default members are hopefully not side-effecting magic invisible stardust code that is by definition invoked implicitly, by code that says one thing and does another, and requires looking up the documentation or the object browser definition of a type to remember what member we’re actually invoking – and even then, it can be obscured; the Excel type library is a prime example, with a hidden _Default property being the (drumroll) default property of the Range class, for example. Lastly, an implicit default member call is not 100% equivalent to an explicit one, and that tiny little difference can go as far as instantly crashing Excel.

Sounds terrible. Why would Rubberduck have a @DefaultMember annotation then?

With Rubberduck’s annotation and inspection/quick-fix system, you can easily define default members for your class modules; simply decorate the procedure with a '@DefaultMember annotation, synchronize member attributes, and done.

It’s not because you can, that you should. If you’re like me and someone gave you a knife, you’d probably at least try not to cut yourself. If you’re writing a custom collection class and you want it to be usable with the classic things(i) syntax rather than an explicit things.Item(i) member call, Rubberduck’s job is to help you do exactly that without needing to remove/export the code file, tweak it manually in Notepad++, then re-import it back into the project – that’s why the @DefaultMember annotation exists: because for the rare cases where you do want a default member, your ducky doesn’t let you down.

Currently, Rubberduck won’t complain if you make a parameterless procedure a default member. There’s an inspection idea that’s up-for-grabs to flag them though, if you’re looking for a fun contribution to an open-source project!

Clean VBA Code pt.2: Avoiding implicit code

Clean code adheres to a number of principles. Does adhering to these principles make good code? Maybe, maybe not. But it definitely helps. One thing I find myself repeating quite a lot in my more recent Stack Overflow answers, is that code should “say what it does, and do what it says” – to me this means writing explicit code. Not just having Option Explicit specified, but avoiding the pitfalls of various “shortcuts” VBA lets us use to… cheat ourselves.

Avoid implicit member calls, write code that says what it does, and does what it says. Instead of:

Cells(i, 2) = 42

Prefer explicit qualifiers, and explicit member calls:

ActiveSheet.Cells(i, 2).Value = 42

In Excel, avoid working with ActiveSheet when you mean to work with Sheet1. Use the Worksheets collection instead of the Sheets collection when you mean to retrieve a worksheet in a workbook; sheets can contain charts and other non-worksheet sheet types.

Dim targetBook As Workbook
Set targetBook = Application.Workbooks.Open(path)

Dim targetSheet As Worksheet
Set targetSheet = targetBook.Worksheets("Sheet1")

Debug.Print targetSheet.Range("A1").Value

If the sheet we need exists in ThisWorkbook at compile-time, then we don’t need a variable for it – it already exists:

Debug.Print Sheet1.Range("A1").Value

Every sheet in your Excel VBA project has a code name that you can set to any valid VBA module identifier name (up to 31 characters), and that identifier is now accessible from anywhere in your VBA project. To change the name, modify the (Name) property in the properties toolwindow (F4).

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About the Bang! operator…

Avoid the Bang! operator. How many of the people using it know that the identifier to the right of the operator is a string literal that isn’t compile-time validated? It looks like early-bound code, but it isn’t. The Bang! operator is an implicit default member call against a default member that takes a string parameter. So this:

rs.Fields!Field1 = 42

Is really this:

rs.Fields.Item("Field1").Value = 42

Now, this doesn’t mean we have to go crazy and dogmatic here – default properties are idiomatic, and not necessarily toxic… when used carefully. The Item member of a collection class is, by convention, the default member of the class:

rs.Fields("Field1").Value = 42

Note that Fields is plural, which strongly signals that ("Field1") is an indexed property accessor (it is)… and we could even infer that it returns a Field object reference. There’s an implicit default member call happening, yes, but it’s pure syntax sugar here: even if we don’t know that Fields is a class with a default Item property, we can tell that syntactically, we’re invoking something, getting an object reference back and assigning its Value property with a value.

Contrast with rs.Fields!Field1 = 42, which reads like… witchcraft, come to think of it.

As an Excel programmer I’m biased though: Access programmers probably see the Bang! operator differently. After all, it’s everywhere, in every tutorial – why would it suddenly be wrong?

Pros:

• Faster to type (?).
• Encourages using standard PascalCase field names and collection keys. Kinda.

Cons:

• Confusing syntax for an unfamiliar reader; makes a string look like a member access. That one’s arguably on the reader/maintainer to read up, yes. Still.
• No compile-time validation: what follows the ! operator is a string… And any member calls that might follow are always late-bound: Option Explicit will not save you from a typo.
• If any explicit member call follows the string, it is inherently late-bound and not compile-time validated either; the editor will offer no intellisense for it.
• Requires otherwise rather uncommon [square bracket] tokens around the name when the name contains spaces.

You have to put the Bang! operator in context: 25 years ago, using fully spelled-out variable names was seen as wasteful and borderline ludicrous. Code was written to be executed, not read: the faster you could type, the better. Oh, how things have changed!

Here’s a screenshot from an old, deleted Stack Overflow question about the Bang! operator in… VB.NET:

The Bang! operator is a relic of the past. There’s no reason to use it in modern code, be it in VBA, VB6… or VB.NET.