Question

I have an object that models an online resource. Therefore, my object has to store the URL of the resource it belongs to. How would I name the getter and setter?

MyObject *myObject = [[MyObject alloc] init];

// Set values
[myObject setURL:url];
myObject.URL = url;

// Get values
[myObject URL];
myObject.URL;

or would the following be better:

MyObject *myObject = [[MyObject alloc] init];

// Set values
[myObject setUrl:url];
myObject.url = url;

// Get values
[myObject url];
myObject.url;

The former example would of course require to define the property in the following way:

@property (retain, getter = URL, setter = setURL:) NSURL *url;

Answer 1

Apple has a list of Acceptable Abbreviations and Acronyms, where URL is listed. I use URL myself, consistent with NSURLRequest, NSURLResponse, NSPersistentStore etc (which all have a URL property).

I think an advantage to using uppercase names is that it works better with camelcase: anURL looks better than anUrl (in my opinion).