Name suggestions for a python dataclass I'm working on?

Question

I need to send messages to an api. There are 2 different types of messages: create or update. Create messages will create an entry in a database. Update messages will update an entry in a database.

Here's the code I've used to implement these as classes:

from abc import ABCMeta, abstractmethod
from dataclasses import asdict, dataclass

@dataclass
class Message(metaclass=ABCMeta):
    message_type: str

    def to_dict(self) -> dict:
        return asdict(self)

@dataclass
class CreateMessage(Message):
      message_id: str
      message_status: str

@dataclass
class UpdateMessage(Message):
      message_id: str
      new_message_status: str

However, my coworker said name of these classes sound more like a function. Do you guys have any suggestions of what I could name the UpdateMessage and CreateMessage classes to be less confusing? He suggested UpdateMessageDto and CreateMessageDto, but I'm concerned that other people won't know what a Dto is.

Answer 1

I agree that CreateMessage for example seems like that would perform as a function. I would suggest ensuring the name uses a noun instead, if possible, since classes generally are objects which contain data, which makes them noticeably different from function which are generally associated with a verb, for example like create_message.

I'd suggest tacking on something like Action to the model class name. Another option is to also be more explicit and add a noun like Model. In case you find that including the phrase "Message" becomes a bit redundant, I'd also suggest removing the Message part of the class, for example having it like CreateModel, and then you can put it in a module called messages.py and that way the from messages import CreateModel will make it clear that CreateModel is a Message model class.

The below example illustrates one of the possible naming schemas I'd suggest:

from __future__ import annotations

from abc import ABCMeta
from dataclasses import asdict, dataclass
from typing import Any


@dataclass
class Message(ABCMeta):
    message_type: str

    def to_dict(self) -> dict[str, Any]:
        return asdict(self)


@dataclass
class CreateModel(Message):
    message_id: str
    message_status: str


@dataclass
class UpdateModel(Message):
    message_id: str
    new_message_status: str