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c#naming-conventions
Michael
Michael

Reputation: 1076

Name convention for properties that are another class with a similar name

I'm sure this has been asked before, but I'm having trouble finding any relevant answers - probably because the generic nature of the terms I'm using.

I have a class - let's call it Foo. Now a given Foo has a variety of properties that define it's nature. For the sake of argument, let's call them Name, Inactive and Notes. There can also be many varieties of Foo, which are each a FooType, for lack of a better word.

So, we have the following class definitions:

public class FooType
{
    public byte Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public bool Inactive { get; set; }
    public string Notes { get; set; }
}

public class Foo
{
    public Guid Id { get; set; }
    public FooType TypeOfFoo { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public bool Inactive { get; set; }
    public string Notes { get; set; }
}

Not exactly an ideal situation, I know. Sadly, the Inactive and Notes fields on FooType are a must, so I can't use an enum as I would like. My quandary, then, is that I'm having trouble figuring out a reasonably descriptive name for TypeofFoo and FooType. Calling them TypeofFoo and FooType is ugly and prone to confusion in the future, so I'm looking for alternatives.

Is there any sort of naming convention that covers this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 692

Answers (2)

D Stanley
D Stanley

Reputation: 152624

No, there's no naming convention. In fact, the .NET Framework itself does not avoid using properties that have the same name as their type and even suggest it in some older guidelines:

SolidBrush.Color

Control.Font

It's not a fool-proof solution, and may cause confusion in certain edge cases like calling static members, but it's not so bad that there's reason to avoid it categorically.

Upvotes: 3

markusfassbender
markusfassbender

Reputation: 346

I would try to use polymophy to subclass Foo and use a factory with an enumeration FooType to create the objects. Your subclasses should override the general methods to add specific behavior. But I think the context is important to choose the right pattern. Just using a special naming is confusing in my opinion and doesn't represent your intend of the classes.

Upvotes: 0

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