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pythonlistdictionarynaming-conventions
fishballLin
fishballLin

Reputation: 45

Python Naming Conventions for Dictionary or List Manipulations

In OOP coding, there is a long-standing naming convention to name accessor/mutator methods get_something and set_something. These directly access or manipulate the properties.

However, if the type of something is like a dict or list in Python, what is a better choice to name the manipulating-function?

For example,

  1. I have a list named booklist, which contains the name of books that I want to read. I want to name the function that appending a new book into the booklist.

    booklist = ["Clean Code", "Code Complete"]

def insert_book_into_booklist(new_book):
    booklist.append(new_book)

    Is there any better choice of insert_book_into_booklist? Just like append_book_in_booklist or set_booklist?

  1. I have a dict named booklist. The key is the name of books that I want to read and the value is the International Standard Book Number (ISBN). I want to name the function that inserts a new book into the booklist.

    booklist = {"Clean Code": "9789862017050", "Code Complete": "9789536185344"}

def insert_book_into_booklist(new_book, isbn):
    if new_book not in booklist:
        booklist[new_book] = isbn

    Is there any better choice of insert_book_into_booklist? Just like set_booklist?

Thank you.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3803

Answers (1)

MihanEntalpo
MihanEntalpo

Reputation: 2072

As you've mentioned OOP, lets pretend, that your "booklist" is a member of a class:

class BookList(object):

    def __init__(self):

        self.booklist = []

So, if you want to add new book into your list, name your method as a verb, that doing what you need, for example "add_book". Also, you don't need to add "_into_booklist", bacause your class is a BookList itself and this is enough to understand where the book would be added:

class BookList(object):

    def __init__(self):

        self.booklist = []

    def add_book(book):

        self.booklist.append(book)

Also, you can make this method work with ISBN:

class BookList(object):

    def __init__(self):
        # creating dict, not list
        self.booklist = {} 

    def add_book(book, isbn):

        self.booklist[book] = isbn

Also, as Ev. Kounis said in comment, you can omit "_book" part of method, and leave just "add", but if your class would became more complex in future, this name could get ambiguos. For example, if you have "add_book" method, you can add "add_books" method later (for adding lots of books at a time), and the meaning of that names are easy to understand. But if you short it down, to "add", it'll be less clear, what does this method adds actually.

Upvotes: 3

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