Component Names, Naming Conventions

When you add a component to a form, Windows client automatically assigns a name to the component based on the type of component it is, appended with a number. For example, Windows client would automatically name a new Edit component edit1. A second Edit component then would be named edit2 (assuming you have not already renamed edit1).

Recommendation: Rename components after adding them.

Note: We recommend that you use component names that contain only alphanumeric characters and the underscore (_) character.. Alphanumeric characters include the letters a-z, either upper case or lower case, and the numerals 0-9.

We recommend that you rename components as soon as you add them to a form. This makes it easier to identify what each component is when looking at the list of components. As a convention, we recommend that you use a descriptive name (that is, a name that identifies what the field is used for, such as "CustomerName") and add a prefix for the component type.

So, for instance, as soon as we create the edit1 component, we might want to change the name to CustomerNameEdit. Notice that we kept the "edit" as part of that name, so that we can easily identify what the component type is. The "CustomerName" part lets us know that this is to be used as a field for customer names.

The reason this can be valuable is that on many forms, particularly mulitview forms, you can often have two components that display the same exact information. It is not unusual to have a Customer Name edit field on the Detail View and also have a Customer Name column in the Grid View. So, by naming the former component CustomerNameEdit and the latter one CustomerNameGridCol, you can easily tell which is which when looking at a list of components (as you often must do in Design Mode).

Recommendation: Use default names as part of the component name.

These are the default naming conventions that Windows client uses for each component type:


Component Type	Default Naming Convention	Component Type	Default Naming Convention
Browser	webBrowser	Group box	groupBox
Button	button	Hyperlink button	hyperlinkButton
Chart	chart	List box	list
Check box	checkBox	Menu item	menuItem
Combo box	comboBox	Multi-line edit field	multiLineEdit
DataView	dataView	Notebook	notebook
Date combo box	dateCombo	Notebook tab	notebookTab
Diagram	diagram	Radio button	radioButton
Drop list field	dropList	Static field	static
Edit field	edit	Toolbar button	toolBarButton
Form page	formPage	Tree	tree
Gauge	gauge	User control	userControl
Grid	grid	Vertical grid	verticalGrid
Grid column	gridCol	Vertical grid element	verticalGridElement