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We seems to be abstracting a lot of logic way from web pages and creating "helper" classes. Sadly, these classes are all sounding the same, e.g
ADHelper, (Active Directory) AuthenicationHelper, SharePointHelper
Do other people have a large number of classes with this naming convention?
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A Helper class is a lesser known code smell where a coder has identified some miscellaneous, commonly used operations and attempted to make them reusable by lumping them together in an unnatural grouping.
In object-oriented programming, a helper class is used to assist in providing some functionality, which isn't the main goal of the application or class in which it is used. An instance of a helper class is called a helper object (for example, in the delegation pattern).
Class names should be nouns, in mixed case with the first letter of each internal word capitalized. Try to keep your class names simple and descriptive. Use whole words-avoid acronyms and abbreviations (unless the abbreviation is much more widely used than the long form, such as URL or HTML).
A helper method is a small utility function that can be used to extract logic from views and controllers, keeping them lean. Views should never have logic because they're meant to display HTML.
I would say that it qualifies as a code smell, but remember that a code smell doesn't necessarily spell trouble. It is something you should look into and then decide if it is okay.
Having said that I personally find that a name like that adds very little value and because it is so generic the type may easily become a bucket of non-related utility methods. I.e. a helper class may turn into a Large Class, which is one of the common code smells.
If possible I suggest finding a type name that more closely describes what the methods do. Of course this may prompt additional helper classes, but as long as their names are helpful I don't mind the numbers.
Some time ago I came across a class called XmlHelper during a code review. It had a number of methods that obviously all had to do with Xml. However, it wasn't clear from the type name what the methods had in common (aside from being Xml-related). It turned out that some of the methods were formatting Xml and others were parsing Xml. So IMO the class should have been split in two or more parts with more specific names.
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