Naming conventions and guidelines for custom attributes

Question

Are there any conventions (perhaps by Microsoft) on attributes if their name should be singular or plural?

I'm not sure what the naming conventations are or if there are any at all? I want an attribute for the roles in my system I'm not sure whether by convention (if any) I should pluralize it to RolesAttribute or keep it singular RoleAttribute.

- Edit -

Now I think of it custom attributes are still classes that derive from the Attribute base class, so would the conventions of classes apply to C# attributes as well?

Answer 1

It really depends on the functionality you are implementing. In short, if you are assigning one role using your attribute then keep it singular, if you are assigning multiple roles then make it plural.

In more general terms, Attributes should be named using clear pascal cased names and their function is to associate metadata, or declarative information with code. As with everything else in your code, make sure that they are descriptive and unambiguous.

Some good guidelines I like to follow are the following:

• Avoid unsealed attributes
• Custom attributes should end with the suffix Attribute
• Define constructors which have parameters to intialize properties corresponding to the required arguments
• Each constructor parameter should have the same name (apart from the casing) as the corresponding property
• Define accessors for attribute parameters, usually settable properties for optional parameters and getter only for required parameters
• Mark attributes with the AttributeUsageAttribute