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oopinterfacenamespaces

In what namespace should you put interfaces relative to their implementors?

Specifically, when you create an interface/implementor pair, and there is no overriding organizational concern (such as the interface should go in a different assembly ie, as recommended by the s# architecture) do you have a default way of organizing them in your namespace/naming scheme?

This is obviously a more opinion based question but I think some people have thought about this more and we can all benefit from their conclusions.

Solution

  • The answer depends on your intentions.

    • If you intend the consumer of your namespaces to use the interfaces over the concrete implementations, I would recommend having your interfaces in the top-level namespace with the implementations in a child namespace
    • If the consumer is to use both, have them in the same namespace.
    • If the interface is for predominantly specialized use, like creating new implementations, consider having them in a child namespace such as Design or ComponentModel.

    I'm sure there are other options as well, but as with most namespace issues, it comes down to the use-cases of the project, and the classes and interfaces it contains.