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c#assembliesnaming-conventions
Mike Malter
Mike Malter

Reputation: 1038

Silly Namespace Question

Ok, I have a c# project named BusinessLayer which produces an assembly called BusinessLayer and the namespace is BusinessLayer.

Inside of this project, I am using folders to store code. One folder is called FilterElements and it has folders called FilterKeyReversal, FilterRandom and FilterToday.

Let's take the example of the FilterRandom folder. It has a class called LessThan10DaysGreaterThan50A with a namespace of BusinessLayer.FilterElements.FilterRandom and a single public static method called RunFilter();

In the code behind page of the website that is consuming this method, I have the using statement, Using BusinessLayer. I also have another using statement, using BusinessLayer.FilterElements.

I would think that to expose the RunFilter() method of the LessThan10DaysGreaterThan50A class, I could use the following syntax: FilterRandom.LessThan10DaysGreaterThan50A.RunFilter(), however I get the following error: The name FilterRandom does not exist in the current context.

If I use the following syntax inline, the error goes away: BusinessLayer.FilterElements.FilterRandom.LessThan10DaysGreaterThan50A.RunFilter(), or if I use a using statement of: Using BusinessLayer.FilterElements.FilterRandom, the following syntax works: LessThan10DaysGreaterThan50A.RunFilter().

I would rather use FilterRandom.LessThan10DaysGreaterThan50A.RunFilter() as it seems to make code more readable. If I use an alias with the following syntax of using FilterRandom = BusinessLayer.FilterElements.FilterRandom, I can get what I want, but don't really like the idea of using an alias since it can lead to confusion down the line.

I thought that since my BusinessLayer namespace has nested namespaces, I'd be able to pick up the remaining namespace, but I can't seem to get it to work. Anybody know how to make this work without using an alias, or am I going to have to use the entire namespace name every time?

Thanks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 259

Answers (1)

Pieter van Ginkel
Pieter van Ginkel

Reputation: 29632

Nope, it doesn't. I know it's very irritating.

My first try at solving this issue (I had the same issue) was adding these usings:

using FilterRandom = BusinessLayer.FilterElements.FilterRandom;

The problem then becomes that you have to add one for every sub namespace you want to include, and that becomes a mess.

How I permanently solved this is by changing the namespaces in the project so that, in your example, FilterRandom would e.g. be in BusinessLayer.

The problem you are actually seeing is that you have too many namespaces. It isn't strange it happens. They are a great way of organizing your code and classes and it's not that hard to have it go out of hand. What I mean by changing the namespaces is that I merged many small namespaces into larger ones. This sometimes means renaming classes, but my opinion is that the class name on itself should be meaningful, without the namespace prefix.

This way, I permanently solved these issues in my project (60kloc) and it worked out great.

Upvotes: 1

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