Read-only automatic property
I got a question during my latest presentation about automatic properties (full name is actually automatically implemented properties) with just a ‘getter’. I could not remember the syntax, thought it was something with the readonly keyword. I was wrong, here’s the correct syntax.
public class Training
{
public string Title { get; private set; }
public int Days { get; set; }
}
Note that this does have a setter, although it’s set to private. The reason is that it’s otherwise impossible to actually set the Title of the training. Normally we would set the backing field ‘_title’, but as this is generated by the compiler, we can’t access it yet.
The equivalent is:
public class Training
{
private string _title;
private int _days;
public string Title
{
get { return _title; }
private set
{
_title = value;
}
}
public int Days
{
get { return _days; }
set { _days = value; }
}
}
Note that the private setter is still there. You can remove it completely and set the backing field as explained.
Dennis is an independent consultant and software architect who loves building distributed systems and the challenges they bring. What he learns he tries to share via numerous articles, blogposts, presentations and workshops.
this is nice useful feature. However, there is it possible to have default value to a properties ?
equivalent to:
private string _title = “Hello”;
public string Title
{
get { return _title; }
private set
{
_title = value;
}
}
I have something against setting these values in class-scope. Just doesn’t feel right! 🙂
My way would be to do it like this:
class MyClass
{
private string _title;
// constructor
public MyClass()
{
Title = “Hello world”;
}
public string Title
{
get { return _title; }
set { _title = value; }
}
}
which in automatic-property world would result in
class MyClass
{
// constructor
public MyClass()
{
Title = “Hello world”;
}
public string Title { get; set; }
}