Nov 30 2008

Rename JavaScriptConvert?

Max Power, he's the man who's name you'd love to touch! But you mustn't touch! I am considering renaming the JavaScriptConvert class to JsonConvert.

When Json.NET was first released it contained a number of data classes that were prefixed with JavaScript... JavaScriptObject, JavaScriptArray, JavaScriptConstructor. JavaScriptConvert was used to convert the data objects from text and back again. In 2.0 these classes were removed and replaced by the LINQ to JSON API: JObject, JArray, etc, but JavaScriptConvert remained.

The current state of the nation is that just about every Json.NET class is prefixed with Json (JsonReader, JsonWriter, JsonSerializer) except JavaScriptConvert, a situation which I think is somewhat confusing and gets in the way of learning and discovering the Json.NET API through intellisense.

The downside of renaming JavaScriptConvert is that existing code that uses it will need to be updated when moving to a new version of Json.NET. A pain but nothing that Find and Replace couldn’t fix in 5 minutes. A namespace alias would also fix existing code.

using JavaScriptConvert = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert;

Thoughts? Objections?