2 Classes with the same name, serving different purposes

Question

The question I have is so weird that I couldn't even come up with a better title at the moment. Anyhow, I am looking for a way to name 2 classes but cannot figure out what would be the best way forward. I do understand this is an opinion based question but I'm stuck with this... so I would appreciate any opinion on this

Project: A -> Class name: Call (This class will represent the call from one telephone to another) Other classes may/may not subclass this particular class and if so the name of these subclasses would probably relate somehow to the parent class (CallState, CallEndPoint, CallSomething). This Class will not know about the existence of the database, one could say this class will be part of the general telephony driver.

Project: B -> Class name: Call? (This will represent the actual table in a database. The table will have some information about the call like call id, time it entered the system etc, but also other information that may/may not relate to the call). This class will serve essentially as a RowMapper.

Now, these 2 projects most likely will be combined down the line, and If I name the classes the same I would then end up with 2 same name classes in a single project serving 2 different purposes. Now if I was the only person to build this application I could probably digest this, but if multiple people start work on the application it will become confusing to others, especially if more classes will follow the same pattern.

Answer 1

I'm not entire sure what the question here is. Do you want to know if it's possible to give 2 classes the same name, or just whether it's a bad idea?

A convention that is often used for classes that are meant to model database entities, is to postfix the classname with Entity. So you could name the first class Call and the second CallEntity. This removes some ambiguity about the classes purposes. Most professional developers will also immediately make the assumption that the Entity class is supposed to represent something that is persisted.

However if you really insist on giving both classes the same name. That's perfectly possible, if you put them in separate packages. The package you put them in can also provide more clarity about the intent of the class. The first could be domain.model.Call, while the second could be domain.entity.Call

Hope this is somewhat helpful :)

Answer 2

Now, these 2 projects most likely will be combined down the line, and If I name the classes the same I would then end up with 2 same name classes in a single project serving 2 different purposes.

When inside a same application two classes with distinct responsibilities/data need to have the same simple name (that is without the package), you should indeed consider it as something to think of and very probably fix.
Of course you could define these classes in distinct packages but does it really solve your issue ? I don't think. It will make things less clear as client code could use the bad one and at each time developers manipulate/read Call in the code they have to wonder "which Call" they are currently copping with.
Today you have two distinct Call . With such permissive naming conventions, why not a new one in the future ?
Really, not a good idea.

The source of the problem is the way which you design your application.
You split the model in two pats : the agnostic persistence part in a class and the data persistence part in another class. It is a choice (that personally I avoid) but if you make this choice you have to go until the end : distinct clearly each class with a different name. This choice has to be visible and not hidden in a package name only.
For example : Call (domain) and CallEntity (persistence) or in the reverse way CallDTO(domain) and Call(persistence)