Naming guidelines

Following a consistent set of naming conventions in developing a framework can be a major contribution to the framework’s usability. It allows the framework to be used by many developers on widely separated projects. Beyond consistency of form, the names of framework elements must be easily understood and convey each element's function.

The goal of this chapter is to provide a consistent set of naming conventions that results in names that make immediate sense to developers.

Adopting these naming conventions as general code development guidelines results in more consistent naming throughout your code. However, you're only required to apply them to APIs that are publicly exposed (public or protected types and members, and explicitly implemented interfaces).

In this section

Capitalization Conventions
General Naming Conventions
Names of Assemblies and DLLs
Names of Namespaces
Names of Classes, Structs, and Interfaces
Names of Type Members
Naming Parameters
Naming Resources
Portions © 2005, 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc. from Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries, 2nd Edition by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams, published Oct 22, 2008 by Addison-Wesley Professional as part of the Microsoft Windows Development Series.

See also