Hello,

I am wondering what the best practice is when it comes to creating get/set accessors in a reusable class in .NET when you are accessing information via a SQL database. Here is an example:

This is a "Member" class that allows access to a members information.

public class member
{
public string FirstName
{
get {return mFname;}
}

public string LastName
{
get {return mLname;}
}

public DateTime Birthdate
{
get {return new DateTime(birthYear,birthMonth,birthDay);}
}

// here is a function that gathers the info from a db.

public void getMememberInfo(int ID)
        {
            SqlConnection objCon = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings.Ge t("ConnectionString"));
            objCon.Open();

                string SQL = "SELECT * FROM member WHERE id="+ID;
                SqlCommand objCommand = new SqlCommand(SQL, objCon);
                SqlDataReader objReader = objCommand.ExecuteReader();

                while (objReader.Read())
                {
                    mFname = objReader["mem_fname"].ToString();
                                        birthMonth = (int) objReader["bday_month"];
                    birthDay = (int) objReader["bday_day"];
                    birthYear = (int) objReader["bday_year"];
                }
                objCon.Close();
        }
}


Basically, I would like to know when setting these properties, like name, is the best way to create a set accessor for each property and then create a static function which creates a connection, runs a database update query? This seems inefficient. Also, is this the best way to collect the member info and pass it to the Get accessors?

Thanks,

-- shawn

What you have is pretty much the way I do it.

Regarding the Set accessors: usually it's not a good idea to have each one hit the DB. Just set the internal fields, then run an update method to update the whole thing.

Whats the best way to fire the update events? Would it be better to create a function that you can call to update manually or internal to the get/set class that auto detects changes to the internal fields?

I wouldn't recommend auto-updating as this would cause accessive DB hits when you only need one.

Create an update method on the class that performs the single update. Usually the consuming code would know that it is updating the object and that the update would require a save to the db, so you can set all the fields, then call the update method.