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rubynamespacesnaming-conventions
Andrew Vit
Andrew Vit

Reputation: 19249

Ruby namespace etiquette and convention

If I'm writing a helper for an established library, should I create a TheirLibrary::MyHelper module in their namespace, or stay out and make my own ::TheirLibraryMyHelper?

I'm thinking to be predictably consistent, libraries often have precedent for adding extensions to their namespace, such as Spec::Rails, which is a plugin of rails helpers for RSpec, in the existing ::Spec namespace.

On the other hand, I don't feel I "own" the other authors namespace, so should I have any business adding sub-namespaces to it?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 481

Answers (2)

Andrew Vit
Andrew Vit

Reputation: 19249

Looking around, I noticed that the convention for "plugin" or "extension" gems are required as:

require 'coolthing/plugin' which corresponds to the namespace Coolthing::Plugin

while other projects are

require 'coolthing-plugin' which corresponds to the unique namespace CoolthingPlugin

Generally only those that are "official" are embedded into the original namespace. Those that are follow-on additions from separate parties should use their own namespace.

Upvotes: 0

Lee
Lee

Reputation: 18747

I would stay out of their namespace (whatever you end up choosing to name your extension namespace) because that means you aren't going to accidentally collide with something they decide to do down the road.

Upvotes: 1

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