Inclusive Class

ID

php.inclusive_class

Severity

info

Remediation Complexity

trivial

Remediation Risk

medium

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Code Smell

Language

Php

Tags

code_smell, inclusive

Description

Reports a class, interface, trait or enum whose name contains a non-inclusive term such as blacklist, whitelist, master or slave. The check is a case-insensitive substring test, so compound names like MasterController or SlaveNode are flagged.

Rationale

Type names are part of a project’s public vocabulary: they appear in autocompletion, stack traces, documentation and every file that uses the type. Terms like master/slave or whitelist/blacklist carry exclusionary connotations and have widely-adopted neutral replacements (primary/replica, allow-list/deny-list) that read at least as clearly. Choosing inclusive names keeps the codebase welcoming without any loss of meaning.

<?php

class MasterController {}   // FLAW - "master" is non-inclusive
interface SlaveNode {}      // FLAW - "slave" is non-inclusive

class PrimaryController {}  // OK - neutral replacement
interface ReplicaNode {}    // OK - neutral replacement

Remediation

Rename the type to an inclusive equivalent: master becomes primary/main, slave becomes replica/secondary, whitelist becomes allowList, and blacklist becomes denyList. Use an IDE rename refactoring so all references update together.

References