Why is this an issue?

Duplicated string literals make the process of refactoring complex and error-prone, as any change would need to be propagated on all occurrences.

Exceptions

No issue will be raised on:

• duplicated string in decorators
• strings with less than 5 characters
• strings with only letters, numbers and underscores

How to fix it

Use constants to replace the duplicated string literals. Constants can be referenced from many places, but only need to be updated in a single place.

Code examples

Noncompliant code example

With the default threshold of 3:

def run():
    prepare("action1")  # Noncompliant - "action1" is duplicated 3 times
    execute("action1")
    release("action1")

@app.route("/api/users/", methods=['GET', 'POST', 'PUT'])
def users():
    pass

@app.route("/api/projects/", methods=['GET', 'POST', 'PUT'])  # Compliant - strings inside decorators are ignored
def projects():
    pass

Compliant solution

ACTION_1 = "action1"

def run():
    prepare(ACTION_1)
    execute(ACTION_1)
    release(ACTION_1)