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I am developing a new set of API methods for carpooling/cab booking, so if a developer needs to develop an app or webportal for carpooling, he can call my JSON API. Basically making it easy for developers.

My API current has:

  • AddVehicle
  • AddJourney
  • SearchJourney
  • SubscribeToThisJourney(journey)
  • SubscriberList(journey) to get list of people who have subscribed for this journey
  • AcceptSubscription(subscriber)
  • AcceptedSubcriberList
  • SubscriberList to get list of providers I have subscribed to

I need help with replacing subscriber with something else. It's difficult to remember, and confusing when you see 3 methods that mean very different things: SubscriberList, SubscribedToThisJourneyList and AcceptedSubscriberList. Confusing to remember.

  • One is a list of who I have subscribed to
  • Who has subscribed to me
  • Whose subscription I have accepted

How can I name these methods to make them easier to understand and remember?

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  • Please note, I have been migrated from ux.stackexchange.com. I hope to get feedback from the developers out there. – Siddharth Nov 1 '12 at 16:20
  • So your question is? We can probably guess it, but it's a good idea to make it explicit in the text of the question. – Mike Partridge Nov 1 '12 at 16:34
  • I hope its clearer now. – Siddharth Nov 1 '12 at 16:46
  • I hope I didn't change your meaning with my edit, but your use of the term API was a little off. Questions for you: SubscriberList and AcceptedSubscriberList are in your initial list, but SubscribedToThisJourneyList is not; is there a typo in there somewhere? – Mike Partridge Nov 1 '12 at 17:00
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Here are some suggestions for names for the three methods that you list as needing attention:

  • One is a list of who I have subscribed to - based on your earlier description for SubscriberList, I assume by 'who' you mean which providers, so a clearer version might be: ProvidersSubscribedTo(user)
  • Who has subscribed to me - assuming this is meant to list the subscribers who I, as a Provider, have not yet accepted: PendingSubscribers(provider)
  • Whose subscription I have accepted - AcceptedSubscribers(provider)

I've used parameters to indicate the context of the method call, so depending on how the calls are made, they might not be required.

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  • Oh man, my test looks so neat now. PendingSubscribers, For loop, acceptSubscription, AcceptedSubscribers. This is what I am talking about. – Siddharth Nov 2 '12 at 4:55
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I do not see a problem with your chosen names, as the verb subscribe and the noun subscriber have very different (but rightly) related meanings in English.

Proper documentation is going to be key here.

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  • I agree, proper documentation is needed. – Siddharth Nov 2 '12 at 3:30

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