Automate your Code Reviews with SSW Code Auditor

As a project or company grows, managing code standards throughout your team becomes virtually impossible. But consistent code is crucial to future development and maintenance. SSW Code Auditor lets you take control of your code and automatically review your web apps and projects - giving you more opportunity to spend time where it really matters.

Here at SSW, we face the problem of maintaining our standards across nearly five thousand web pages, over twenty active projects in both Visual Basic (6 and .NET) and C-Sharp. There comes a point where a tool to check (or audit) our work would need was needed, this tool is SSW Code Auditor.

How do you plan on using SSW Code Auditor

• Screenshots (free version – VS Extension)
• Visual Studio 2013/2012/2010 Check-In Policy
• Tutorial
• ASP Migration from .Net 1.1 to .Net 2.0
• How to make a Custom Rule for a SQL Database

SSW Code Auditor User Guide

1. Prerequisites
2. Tip: Add to your Favourites
3. Running SSW Code Auditor Wizard
4. Creating New Rule
5. Creating Regular Expression
6. The Reports
7. Tools | Options

1. Prerequisites

   1. To install, view the Installation User Guide
   2. To register, view the Registration User Guide
   
   

2. Tip: Add to your Favourites

   Add SSW CodeAuditor Visual Studio Extension to your Favourites. Download Link: SSW Code Auditor - VS Extension
   

   
   Figure: Add to your Favourites

3. Running SSW Code Auditor Wizard

   When you run the SSW Code Auditor there will be a step by step wizard to guide you through the audit process.

   
   Figure: Run SSW Code Auditor
   
   
   Figure: Select a predefined Job or create a new one
   
   
   Figure: Add the paths to scan
   
   
   Figure: Available scan types - Files, Folders, URLs, VS Solutions and Projects
   
   
   Figure: Select the rules you want to run
   
   
   Figure: Indicate where you'd like the report issued to
   
   
   Figure: SSW Code Auditor can be run on a schedule from the command line
   
   
   Figure: Ready to start the scanning process
   
   
   Figure: Scanning in progress
   
   
   Figure: Results are in! Let's view the report
   
   
   Figure: Finished! Thanks for using SSW Code Auditor
   
   
   
   

4. Creating New Rule

   To see a detailed walkthrough of how to create a new regular expression rule from scratch, see the Regular Expression Rule Tutorial.

   To create a new rule for a Job:

   1. Select the designated Job and click next to the Rules Definition page.
   2. Click "Add..." on the bottom right of the Rules ListView.
   3. Select "Create a new rule" from the radio option and enter name for the new rule.
      
      Figure: Create a new rule
      
      
      Figure: Choose different methods to create a new rule
      
      
   4. Add general information of this rule.
      
      Figure: General information of this rule
      
      
   5. Enter the regular expression used by this rule and a regular expression in the search-in field to filter the files this rule run on.
      
      Figure: Search information of this rule
      
      
      Figure: C# code for another rule search pattern
      
      
   6. Tick the checkbox and enter the replacement text to automatically fix your code.
      
      Figure: Replacement text of this rule
      
      
   7. You can test your regular expression on some simple test string before running it on your projects.
      
      Figure: Simple regular expression testing
   8. 
      
      Figure: Change history of this rule
   9. 
      
      Figure: Statistics of this rule
   10. 
       
       Figure: Rule exceptions
   
   
   
   

5. Create Regular Expression

   The following images show how to create your expression.

   
   Figure: Figure: Use the powerful Regular Expression wizard to build patterns
   
   
   Figure: The wizard also shows you any group matchings, this information is very useful when you are building find & replace patterns
   
   
   Figure: Figure: The wizard provides a testing ground for your Regular Expression
   
   
   Figure: You see check the regular expression in a more human readable way here
   
   

   More information on regular expressions.

   
   

6. The Reports

   
   Figure: Job Report - before (Bad)

   
   Figure: Job Report - after (Good)

7. Tools | Options

   
   Figure: Code Auditor Settings for Reports

   
   Figure: Code Auditor Settings for TFS Check-in Policy