Question

As the title indicate, how should I name the variables that reference GUI elements.

buttonStartTest
startTestButton
btnStartTest
startTestBtn

or should I use startTest?

I like this one: startTestButton, but I don’t know what the convention is, and what’s a good way to name them. I know the Hungarian notation is discouraged, but on GUI it is “allowed”.

I also wonder what is the prefered way to name variables referencing viewcontrollers? If you have a variable referencing a UINavigationController, I name them myReferenceNVC, should I just use myReferenceinstead?

Answer 1

There’s no reason to shorten button to btn, it clearly defies the verbose platform conventions and button is easier to read, so you can throw those out straight away. Apple tends to append types rather than prepend them, so fooButton is preferable to buttonFoo – cf. FooViewController, FooAppDelegate, etc.

I started out not appending a type at all, but I found that instance variables that weren’t UI elements often conflicted with names for UI elements, so I wouldn’t recommend leaving button out altogether.

For more information, see Coding Guidelines for Cocoa – Apple do have guidance for this.