Properties in C#
Introduction:
To understand the need for properties, let us understand what is the problem with this the below class?
public class Person
{
public int Id;
public string? Name;
}
The problems with this class is that it violates Encapsulation. Whoever uses this class can set any value for Id and Name. I mean the Id could be negative and name could be null.
To solve this problem, we can rewrite our class as below:
public class Person
{
private int Id;
private string? Name;
public void SetId(int id)
{
if (id < 0)
{
throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("id");
}
this.Id = id;
}
public int GetId()
{
return this.Id;
}
}
Here, we have a getter and setter functions. This is common in any programming language.
What C# provides us to solve this problem?
In C#, we use get and set accessors to implement properties; A property with *only* get will be a Read-only field. A property with *only* set will be a Write-only field. A property with both get and set will be Read/Write property.
The major advantage of using set and get accessors over the traditional method is that we can access them as if they are a public field.
To solve the same problem as above using set and get, we write the code as below:
public class Person
{
private int _id;
public int Id
{
set
{
if (value < 0)
{
throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("id");
}
this._id = value;
}
get
{
return this._id;
}
}
}
This code is cleaner and better.
