Another option is to use an enum, so it looks like getUserMessage(userId, MessageResultOption.FullMeesage). Even if there's only two options, it's more readable

Another option is to use an enum, so it looks like getUserMessage(userId, MessageResultOption.FullMeesage). Even if there's only two options, it's more readable than a boolean. I'd question this specific case in a different way, though: summary vs detail sounds like different object types, which means different return types and so there should be two different methods (eg: getUserMessageSummaries(userId) and getUserMessageDetail(userId) ). It's perhaps a bit more work up front, but when consuming this you don't end up with a bunch of properties that may or may not be null depending on how you called this (instead, they're just not there on the summary response), and in a typed language it will simply fail to compile (making your mistake very obvious).