hi is there any convention I should follow when I want to name a function that returns

Flow

type? eg. im observing users from database, should i name it like

fun users() : Flow<List<User>>
or
fun observeUsers() : Flow<List<User>>
or
fun usersChanges() : Flow<List<User>>
or 
fun getUsersStream() : Flow<List<User>>

? There is a lot of options and im curious about the best practices

We're currently using

getUsersFlow

. Whether it's a well-used convention, I don't know.

I avoid calling anything

get

as it’s mostly redundant in Kotlin and rarely used.

userFlow()

or simply

users()

would be fine imo 🙂

I like verbs in functions.

If it doesn't create a new flow but always returns the same it could be a val. If I need a verb, for example for API calls, I prefer "fetch" and "retrieve" over "get". The latter is mostly used for getters and usually simple behavior with almost no side effects are assumed.

Not gonna argue with you there.

I think it depends. If it really represents a simple stream,

users()

is what I would use, however, when there is some initial loading going like an initial overhead, I would call it

observeUsers()

i’ve used

observeUsers

in the past as well (with Rx) but now when I thought about it it does not make sense - the method is not observing anything, its returning me the observable. I am observing the result that the method will return me. I went with

getUsersStream

approach

It’s not really a user stream though. That would be

Flow<User>

. The plural “users” doesn’t make it much better imo as it’s easy to miss and not every word has a plural “s”, so consistency is difficult. It could be either a “user list stream” or “user list state”. I associate “stream” with something that keeps appending new data as it becomes available. The

Flow<List<User>>

more likely emits a completely new list every time that replaces the previous list. Hence “state”.