Client's method for channel subscribing

Question

I am writing an open-source application for real-time messaging in web. In my application clients from browser can subscribe on channels. But every channel belongs to a certain namespace which determines channel's settings:

client.subscribe('/football/news', function(message) {
    // message from channel received
});

where football is namespace name and news is channel name. football can be a default namespace for project and in this case we can write in this way:

client.subscribe('/news', function(message) {
    // message from channel received
});

i.e. without namespace name. This is how it works right now.

But my question is about / path separator. Is it ok? We need the way do separate namespace name and channel name. / usage was influenced by Bayeux protocol spec. But maybe it would be more simple and correct to write in such manner:

client.subscribe('football', 'news', function(message) {
    // message from channel received
});

or with default namespace:

client.subscribe(null, 'news', function(message) {
    // message from channel received
});

or even:

client.subscribe('news', function(message) {
    // message from channel received
});

I personally feel that the second way is better. But before refactoring I decided to ask for your opinion.

Answer 1

An opinion question, always tough to answer.

I like the first way better, 1 less parameter and it is easier to grok for me.

Incidentally, ABAP uses forward slashes for namespaces as well.

Answer 2

If you always have two levels, then passing two parameters has its advantages.

If the channels form an arbitrarily deep hierarchy, then a /path/to/the/channel makes more sense.