What is NPath Complexity and how to avoid it?

Question

In this line:

public Map getAll(BusinessTargetPK pkBusinessTargetId) throws Exception

I am getting this error:

NPath Complexity is 32,768 (max allowed is 200)

And in this line:

public Map getAll( Long  RLE_ROLE_ID  ) throws Exception {

I get this error:

The method getAll() has an NPath complexity of 2048

I am completely unaware of what is NPath Complexity and what it means.

Can someone give advice how to avoid this type of error?

Solution 1

This Link: https://modess.io/npath-complexity-cyclomatic-complexity-explained/

explains it very well as:

The NPath complexity of a method is the number of acyclic execution paths through that method.

This means you should avoid long functions with a lot of (nested) if/else statements.

So my advice would be:

1. Split your functions into smaller ones
2. Eliminate useless if/else-statements where possible

Solution 2

This is an old thread and Wolverine789 has probably figured out the answer by now but for those who still find this thread in the Google search results, I found the following description of the error by Niklas Modess helpful:

https://modess.io/npath-complexity-cyclomatic-complexity-explained/

Comments

[Wolverine789]

The NPath complexity of a method is the number of acyclic execution paths through that method or The simple explanation is that how many "paths" there are in the flow of your code in the function.

[sqlab]

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