Name for sender/receiver of messages

Question

I have a class which is responsible for sending and receiving messages. Messages are sent by using myInstance.send(message, channel) and messages are received by registering a MessageListener with a channel to listen on.

I would usually just call this something fairly generic such as MessageManager but I have recently read Naming Classes - How to avoid calling everything a "<WhatEver>Manager"? which made me try and find another name. The closest I could come to a good name was MessageDispatcher which doesn't really convey the fact that also receives messages. Are there any generally used names for a class of this nature?

Answer 1

I tend to like the names Publisher and Subscriber when dealing with messages (see more info on publish/subscribe pattern here).

If your message handling is similar to that a neat and tidy naming strategy could be the to separate the whole thing into these interfaces.

// Publisher of messages
public interface MessagePublisher {
    void send(Message m, Channel c);
}

// Subscriber of messages
public interface MessageSubscriber {
    void messageReceived(Message r);
}

// Handles registration
public interface MessageSubscriberAware {
    void registerMessageSubscriber(MessageSubscriber s, Channel c);
}

// The "glue" - the concrete implementation
public class MessageDispatcher implements MessagePublisher, MessageSubscriberAware {
    // Impl
}

The concrete implementation of this that could be named MessageDispatcher, it is aware of the subscribers and can therefore distribute the published messages.