Method Overloading. Can you overuse it?

Question

What\'s better practice when defining several methods that return the same shape of data with different filters? Explicit method names or overloaded methods?

For exa

Answer 1

Yes you can overuse it, however here is another concept which could help keep the usage of it under control ...

If you are using .Net 3.5+ and need to apply multiple filters you are probably better to use IQueryable and chaining i.e.

GetQuery().ApplyCategoryFilter(category).ApplyProductNameFilter(productName);

That way you can reuse the filtering logic over and over whereever you need it.

public static IQueryable ApplyXYZFilter(this IQueryable query, string filter)
{
     return query.Where(XYZ => XYZ == filter);
}