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Tag Archive for naming

How to avoid general names for abstract classes?

In general it’s good to avoid words like “handle” or “process” as part of routine names and class names, unless you are dealing with (e.g.) file handles or (e.g.) unix processes. However abstract classes often don’t really know what they’re going to do with something besides, say, process it. In my current situation I have an “EmailProcessor” that logs into a user’s inbox and processes messages from it. It’s not really clear to me how to give this a more precise name, although I’ve noticed the following style matter arises:

What should be done with class names that conflict (common) framework names

What should be done exactly when the most obvious class name for a component is taken by a framework? In my case, I need to make a class that describes an HTTP request. Of course, the most common name is “taken” as System.Web.HttpRequest. What should I do? This project will be used in a web context, so I’d really rather not force people to not import the System.Web namespace, or type out all of my class names manually.