Question

I want to give a meaningfull name for method which i am not able to find enough good. Method should to lock and unlock user by parameter .

Candidates signs are:

void LockUser(int userid,bool @lock)
void LockUser(int userid,bool @locking)
void LockOrUnlockUser(int userid,bool @lock)

void LockUser(int userid);
void UnlockUser(int userid);

problem at first and second is method name says lockuser but it is also able to unlock user by lock parameter so this is confusing. LockOrUnlock method name is more meaningfull but i couldn’t find better parameter name for it. It can be shouldLock ?
Another apporach is seperate them to different methods and this provide more meaningfull names for methods but i want to just use one method instead of both.

Waiting suggestions.

Answer 1

Martin Fowler suggests using separate methods. Otherwise you implement a Flag Argument method, which he believes to be a bad design choice.

A flag argument is a kind of function argument that tells the function
to carry out a different operation depending on its value.

My general reaction to flag arguments is to avoid them. Rather than
use a flag argument, I prefer to define separate methods.