Back to basics: Naming

Between these functions which one do you feel is appropriately named?

Comments

[Stepan Stulov]

"If am I developer?". Your code is a set of commands and statements. It doesn't ask its reader questions like how their day is. And everything, that's not some Email class's own function (a'la email.isValid) and that starts with "is" sounds like a question.

Only emailIsValid(email), rain or shine.

Also constructions like "if email is email" make no sense. Of course it is. You need to have a quality (such as "valid") to be used to distinguish good emails from bad ones.

Cheers

[Valentin Baca]

prereq question: Is 'email' an actual email or is it an email address?

Calling an 'email address' 'an email' could lead to confusion when you get to actually sending emails.

I'd prefer function isValidEmailAddress(str)

You also probably shouldn't be checking if their email address is valid. Just send the email.

hackernoon.com/the-100-correct-way...

[Mark Lapierre]

I think this is the only valid answer so far. ;)

Seriously though, all the rest ignore the fact that validation is being performed on an email address, not an email. The order of the words doesn't matter much if they're misleading words.

And yup, even an email address with a valid format can still be wrong. I get spam all the time because people keep mistyping their email address. It drives me nuts.

So if you do anything at all, send an activation email.

[Lucas Silva]

isEmail is the best approach :) :)

verb + keyword

isValidEmail is redundant. Imagine the following scenario: A string can be a email, but invalid, so, if is invalid, is not an email. So "isEmail" is very good naming.

github.com/typestack/class-validator

[Alain Van Hout]

As with most things, it depends:

• if the function is supposed to return a boolean (i.e. false or true), then isValidEmail seems like the most expressive, in that it leaves the least room for doubt regarding what the method requires as input and what it will return as output
• if the function is supposed to throw an exception when the string isn't a valid email address and do nothing if it is a valid email address, then validateEmail seems like the most expressive choice

My thoughts on the other options:

• isEmailValid: this one seems more at home in e.g. user.isEmailValid(), so as a plain function this name adds more ambiguity than is necessary
• emailIsValid: the same, with the additional concern that it could just as well be the name of a variable/field than a method to be called/queried, so even more unnecessary ambiguity
• isEmail: very, very vague. Does this refer to a valid email address, a known email address, an object of the type Email, the route via which the user prefers to be contacted ... ?

[Andrew Lucker]

Acronyms are my preference: "iev"

[Sadick]

iev is not clear at all. How would the next person maintaining your code what iev means?

[Max Cerrina]

My own preference is for is... naming; it makes it clear that it's a boolean. I'd say isEmailValid or isEmail -- but with different contects. isEmail to me implies you are checking whether it's an email at all, but isEmailValid is checking if it is a valid email. A valid email is certainly an email.

Honestly, I'd probably have both, for different purposes. They read as completely distinct.

[Bertil Muth]

Usually isEmailValid cause it‘s a common convention for functions/methods that return Boolean, and thus will behave predictably for readers.

For the requirements as code project, I would use emailIsValid, as this is the closest you can get to speaking (when email is valid, do this). And I use that to generate documentation from the code.

So there are sometimes reasons to break from the norm.

[Adrian B.G.]

It returns a boolean answer, so the function should be a question, so it should start with "is" in this case.

I don't think there is a case where "isEmail" and "isEmailValid" are 2 different things, so I will choose the simplest one #KISS.
but ...if you have more features like

function isEmail(e){}
function isEmailRegistered(e){}
function isEmailAdmin(e){}

isEmail will create confusion, and it will have to refactored to isEmailValid.

[katy lavallee]

Not listed, but I would use isValidEmail. is* is a good way to indicate true/false return value. And if (isValidEmail) reads well.

I would not use validateEmail because I would expect an error message in return, not a boolean.

I would not use isEmail because it sounds weird and unclear to me. I can’t put my finger on why though.

I would not use emailIsValid because I assume there would be a series of functions like this, and I would like their names to all start same.

[Sadick]

isValidEmail added. Thanks for the feedback.

[Ben Sinclair]

isEmail sounds weird because it's too generic. For most purposes you'll be validating a user's input, and if they put in [e-mail] that may be a valid email address but it's not valid for use as such in the context of your app.

[Akshendra Pratap Singh]

I like to keep my validation functions in one module, generally named is. So, the call is something like is.email(val). However, if I have to choose a single function, I will name it isEmail. Having valid or validations with is seems a bit redundant to me.

[Sadick]

Nice catch. Let me also add that as a possibility