It would return different representations of the dictionary based on
what enum constant of type SerialFormat was passed in (e.g.
JSONFormat, XMLRPCFormat, OPMLFormat, etc), and that way I wouldn't
be locking myself into one particular representation of the
dictionary like I would if I chose a JSON-specific name for the
method. Which means I could reuse the dictionary category in other
projects where I might need representations other than JSON. Which
means I'd to write less code the next time around.
-- Ilan
On Sep 28, 2007, at 7:40 AM, Stig Brautaset wrote:
Dear all,
I'm currently writing a JSON framework (http://code.brautaset.org/
JSON/ )[0]. It contains a collection of categories adding JSON
support to existing Cocoa classes.
I add a method to NSDictionary and NSArray to return an NSString
instance containing their JSON representations, and therein lies my
problem. What do I name this method? I initially went with -
JSONString, but that is slightly ambiguous and can be confused with
JSON's own string type. I'm leaning towards simply -JSON[1]. What
do you think?
[0] yes, I'm aware there are a couple of existing projects floating
around. Call it intellectual curiosity.
[1] I also considered -JSONText, as "JSON text" is the term used in
the RFC (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4627.txt?number=4627) but this
would seem to indicate that we're returning an NSText instance,
which is not the case.
PS: sorry to bother you all with such banal questions but I find
coming up with good names to be one of the hardest problems in
software development.
