get* vs *

[ipavlic]

What is the reasoning for get prefixes of functions that operate on dates? For example, getUnixTime vs just unixTime. This seems inconsistent with, for example difference* functions which operate on two arguments, or endOf* functions, which also operate on a single date argument. get prefixes appear more appropriate for OOP methods, as opposed to just functions.

[tan75]

Hi @ipavlic
thank you for such an interesting question!
I have already responded to this in the issue you raised so I'll just do a copy-paste here.

There are few reasons for having our current naming convention as is.
We wanted to make our API as similar to the standard JS library as possible so both APIs could easily be used together.
When it comes to getUnixTime, it copies the convention from MDN JS Reference Date getTime
One of the reasons for this naming convention is that its easier to maintain this huge amount of functions that we currently have: e.g.
its easier to implement mass changes (e.g. typescriptify) if all the functions of the same type have the same prefix hence
located together in Finder.
All the get* functions accept one argument and return an integer hence for example, we've got differenceInDays, not getDifferenceInDays.
Hope this clarifies your query.

[ipavlic]

Hi! Thank you for your response. I appreciate all the hard work put into this library. My view on the difference between Date.getTime and, for example, getUnixTime is that getTime is a member function. So one would typically have something like const d = new Date(), and then call d.getTime(). getUnixTime on the other hand doesn't get called on an instance — it's just a regular function. That's commonly the difference between what I labeled as an "object oriented programming" convention and "functional programming" conventions.

The chosen convention does not seem to be consistent either. For example, getOverlappingDaysInIntervals takes two Intervals and returns an integer. differenceInDays takes two Dates and returns an integer. They do similar things, yet one has a get prefix, while the other does not.

[tan75]

@ipavlic
We are doing our best to make this library consistent and easy to use.
But the issue is that currently we have a huge amount of functions and it's not quite easy to make the API consistent within all the functions currently available.
Take the below functions for example:
The getMilliseconds function returns milliseconds of a given date and the milliseconds function returns milliseconds of a given duration.
Here the get prefix allows us to differentiate those 2 functions.
Thank you for your opinion and interest in making this library better - we will definitely consider your suggestions.

[ipavlic]

A potential solution for future functions might something like dateMilliseconds and durationMilliseconds. On the other hand I understand that this would get very cumbersome over time. Thanks again!