For Rails2.0 I have introduced both conventions for
A) names to identify items (for the game engine)
B) names of items for the UI (for the user)
C) names of items for debugging
In some cases they coincide (e.g. companies), in many cases they
differ.
The chosen methods are:
A) Game engine names
String getId() (method of Item interface)
Unique identifier for a given parent
String getURI() (method of Item interface)
Unique identifier in the context
String getFullURI() (method of Item interface)
Unique identifier in the game engine
Examples for getId() are:
Certificates: cert_0, cert_1
Trains: 3_0, 3_1, 3_2, 3_3
Examples for getURI() are:
Certificates: Public/B&O/cert_0
Trains: 3_0
Examples for getFullURI() are:
Certificates: /CompanyManager/Public/B&O/cert_0
Trains: /TrainManager/3_0
B) UI names
String toText() (new method of Item interface)
toText() is already the method that Models use to communicate to the
observer in the UI.
So I extend this to non-Model items, that toText() generates the String
used to display for the User.
The default (defined e.g. in AbstractItem, RailsItem etc.) is that
toText() links to getId().
C) Debugging information
String toString() method
The default is ClassName followed by FullURI (for states) or URI (for items)
Examples:
Train{URI=3_0}
PublicCompany{URI=Public/B&O}
BooleanState{FullURI=/CompanyManager/Public/NYC/closed}
One could (rightly) wonder why not choose toString() instead of toText()
for the UI names?
The reason is that I reserve toString() for debug information.
There are two reasons for it:
ii) (Main) I want refactor support for calls to toText().
toString() is often implicitly called by omitting toString() in string
concatenation.
String s = "Train:" + train;
instead of
String s = "Train:" + train.toText();
i) The new logger (sl4j) supports a resource-friendly mechanism to use
log.debug("Bought new train {}", train);
which automatically calls train.toString() if log is enabled, but does
not call any method if log is turned off.
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