why is posOf() a private function?

Hello,
Please appreciate some help, not sure if this is a design issue or intended to be this way..

I'm trying to implement a RFID reader/access control. The code is checking if the given RFID UID is in the RfidDb, per below:

   int uid = getID(mfrc522.uid.uidByte);

  if (db.contains(uid)) {
      char name[db.maxNameLength()];
      int position = db.posOf(uid);
      db.getName(position,name);
      Serial.println(name);
    }

I would like to retrieve the Name of the record, but using db.getName() I need the 'position' of the record in the database (?). But none of the functions appear to return the position, so how is it possible to retrieve the record? It seems posOf could be public to solve this?

I'm guessing I'm doing something wrong.. but not sure.

Thanks!
Tom

[gregington]

Hi Tom,

There's no reason to leave that private. I guess that I never needed this in my use case (as I wasn't logging). In hindsight, what I should have done was return the position from contains() instead of a bool, with -1 representing not found.

So the options are expose posOf and posOf24 or return the position in the contains() method. I like returning the position from contains() but this breaks backwards compatibility. It means that you don't have to traverse the database twice after checking contains to get the name in your example above.

I'll have some time this weekend to make changes. I think I'm tending towards releasing a 2.0.0 with changes to the contains() methods to return the index.

Awesome @gregington thanks for the fast feedback there! I found another way to accomplish my goal, without needing to lookup the Name like that, so not urgent for me to have this feature. But perhaps others would like this feature. Thanks again! -Tom