Xamarin.forms: [Bug] DisplayAlert should be DisplayAlertAsync

[hassanhabib]

Current code for DisplayAlert doesn't follow the language best practices.
Here's an example:
public Task DisplayAlert(string title, string message, string accept, string cancel)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(cancel))
throw new ArgumentNullException("cancel");

        var args = new AlertArguments(title, message, accept, cancel);
        if (IsPlatformEnabled)
            MessagingCenter.Send(this, AlertSignalName, args);
        else
            _pendingActions.Add(() => MessagingCenter.Send(this, AlertSignalName, args));

        return args.Result.Task;
    }

Asynchronous methods should be trailed with Async.

[hartez]

You are correct that the name probably should have been DisplayAlertAsync. But the method is part of the public API; renaming it would be a breaking change. So I'm afraid we're stuck with DisplayAlert for the time being.

[adrianknight89]

I'm in favor of making existing methods obsolete and providing the new names, but this reminded me of an old request I made: https://github.com/xamarin/Xamarin.Forms/issues/2941

[hartez]

That's one option. The catch is that we'd look like we were following the pattern of "async methods have the async suffix and synchronous methods don't have a suffix"; but the method that _looks_ synchronous (DisplayAlert) is actually async. Which would also surprise new users.

Maybe at some point in the future we'll have an opportunity to make a clean break or a whole new alert/dialog API, at which point we can better align our names with the conventions.

[samrgc]

It should not use a bug tag.