Home/ Questions/Q 3427790
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-18T06:52:48+00:00

I am creating function (for example) to validate content, then if it is valid,

  • 0

I am creating function (for example) to validate content, then if it is valid, close the view, if it is not, present further instructions to the user. (Or other such actions.) When I go to name it, I find myself wondering, should I call it -doneButtonPressed or -validateViewRepairAndClose? Would it be better to name the method after what UI action calls it, or name it after what it does? Sometimes it seems simple, things like -save are pretty clear cut, other times, and I can’t thing of a specific example right off, but I know some have seemed like naming them after what they do is just so long and confusing it seems better to just call them xButtonPressed where x is the word on the button.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It’s a huge problem!!! I have lost sleep over this.

    Purely FWIW … my vote is for “theSaveButton” “theButtonAtTheTopRight” “userClickedTheLaunchButton” “doubleClickedOnTheRedBox” and so on.

    Generally we name all those routines that way. However .. often I just have them go straight to another routine “launchTheRocket” “saveAFile” and so on.

    Has this proved useful? It has because often you want to launch the rocket yourself … in that case call the launchTheRocket routine, versus the user pressing the button that then launches the rocket. If you want to launch the rocket yourself, and you call userClickedTheLaunchButton, it does not feel right and looks more confusing in the code. (Are you trying to specifically simulate a press on the screen, or?) Debugging and so on is much easier when they are separate, so you know who called what.

    It has proved slightly useful for example in gathering statistics. The user has requested a rocket launch 198 times, and overall we’ve launched the rocket 273 times.

    Furthermore — this may be the clincher — say from another part of your code you are launching the rocket, using the launch-the-rocket message. It makes it much clearer that you are actually doing that rather than something to do with the button. Conversely the userClickedTheLaunchButton concept could change over time, it might normally launch the rocket but sometimes it might just bring up a message, or who knows what.

    Indeed, clicking the button may also trigger ancillary stuff (perhaps an animation or the like) and that’s the perfect place to do that, inside ‘clickedTheButton’, as well as then calling the gutsy function ‘launchTheRocket’.

    So I actually advocate the third even more ridiculously complicated solution of having separate “userDidThis” functions, and then having separate “startANewGame” functions. Even if that means normally the former does almost nothing, just calling the latter!

    BTW another naming option would be combining the two… “topButtonLaunchesRockets” “glowingCubeConnectsSocialWeb” etc.

    Finally! Don’t forget you might typically set them up as an action, which changes everything stylistically.

    [theYellowButton addTarget:.. action:@selector(launchRockets) ..];
[theGreenButton addTarget:.. action:@selector(cleanUpSequence) ..];
[thatAnimatingButtonSallyBuiltForUs addTarget:.. action:@selector(resetAll) ..];
[redGlowingArea addTarget:.. action:@selector(tryGetRatingOnAppStore) ..];

    perhaps that’s the best way, documentarily wise! This is one of the best questions ever asked on SO, thanks!

    • 0