Best Practices in Rev development

[Devin Asay]

On Jun 19, 2007, at 10:00 PM, Kay C Lan wrote:

> On 6/20/07, Devin Asay <devin_asay at byu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I like this technique, but there are lots of times when I've created
>> a button, given it a name and label, then down the road decided that
>> the label isn't exactly right and needs to be changed for clarity's
>> sake. Often in these cases I have already referred to the button many
>> times in handlers, so it becomes a chore to rename the button. So you
>> would lose one of the main advantages of the capability of having the
>> name and the label be different.
>
>
> Not so, and is in fact one of the reasons I like following the  
> pattern of
> ensuring the label and the name are the same (which typically are  
> identical
> to the MySQL column name I'm retrieving the data from). Should I  
> decide down
> the track that the name, either in MySQL or Rev needs to change to  
> something
> better, in Rev you simply open up the IDE Find and Replace (not the in
> script Search). In most cases, because the original name is self  
> explanatory
> it is highly likely that it is unique so a global Find and Replace  
> is OK,
> but if you're way into a project and you discover you've just  
> created your
> 15th "Next" button and figure maybe some buttons should be named/ 
> labeled
> 'Next Card', 'Next Page', 'Next Chapter', 'Next Week', etc etc, the  
> Find and
> Replace does a great (but slow) job of identifying the actual  
> control or a
> reference to it in a script.
>
> Yes, if you had 15 Next buttons with 10s of references to each of  
> them in
> scripts, changing them at a later date would be a pain, which of  
> course is
> the reason for the 'best practice' to intentionally avoid the  
> generic 'Next'
> and think of a 'descriptive' name; is it Next Job, Next Pay, Next  
> Dance, etc
> etc. If you can be descriptive enough to avoid repetition then  
> changing

Well argued, Kay. (Yes, I do know about Find and Replace, but it is  
often overridden by the lazyDeveloper flag. ;-) )

In fact, based on your argument I may add a new best practice item:  
As much as possible, keep object names unique within a stack. It will  
make finding and changing references to object names in  scripts  
easier, should it become necessary.

Regards,

Devin

Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University