Can we have same name for more than one entity class?

Question

In our project, developers are creating the custom entity class with same but belonging to different namespaces.

Is it a right approach to create classes with same name as per the standards?
or should we avoid that even though they belong to different namespaces?

Can anyone share a MSDN link for reference on this topic?

Nilesh Shah · Answer

Hi Sri Ram, It's all about working in multi-developers teams or multi-team environment, where many developers are working, and they have their own code branches, some code yet not checked in. Then how will you ensure no one uses the class name that you have used? That's why the concept of namespace was introduced. to answer your question, MS has many classes with the same name, but in different namespaces, e.g. Timer class is in two different namespaces: System.Windows.Forms.Timer System.Windows.Forms.Timer System.Threading.Timer So, go with this concept, use namespaces.

Nilesh Shah · Answer

Namespaces were introduced to remove this confusion about class names. because it will always happen in multi-team environments that 2 devs will come with same name. Refering to a class with namespace will avoid this confusion. There is no harm in using same name. as for the guideline, here are some links, but it does not mention what I said above: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4xhs4564(v=vs.71).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/czefa0ke(v=vs.71).aspx

Sri Ram · Answer

Thanks Nilesh, personally I don't like to have same class name for two .cs files used in different contexts. This is what happened in our(single) team and defended not to use same name though the namespace will help to resolve. I really don't understand why developers create classes with same names when something is already exists and why can't they name the class with different name as per the context. Have you ever seen Microsoft has done this in c#? If yes, can you provide some example please. I was looking for some MSDN resource or industry standard practice on this topic.

Can we have same name for more than one entity class?

Answers (3)