Should I use a property or field?

dotnetDeveloper · March 6th, 2009, 12:54 PM

I understand the differences between a property and a field as explained here http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadF...rtiesInCS.aspx but I am still having troubles figuring out when to use what.

Thanks In Advance

Imar · March 6th, 2009, 01:13 PM

As I explained in my posts, Properties hide data, while fields provide direct access to the data of a class. Typically, public fields are considered a bad practice as they don't allow you to protect or validate data. Even if you don't need protection or validation, you should still use properties (for example as automatically implemented properties in C# or in an upcoming release of VB.NET). That way, they more or less behave the same as fields (e.g. easy to implement and proivide direct access to the data), but you can still implement other behavior later.

In other words: when in doubt, use properties.

What is the part that is confusing you exactly?

Imar

dotnetDeveloper · March 6th, 2009, 01:17 PM

I don't understand the part about hiding data. How do Properties hide data and what is a good scenario for when you would want to hide your data?

Thanks In Advance

Imar · March 6th, 2009, 01:27 PM

Did you check the posts I linked to (and replied on to you) earlier?

One of the examples is a read-only property that returns someone's full name as a combination of a first and last name; something you can't accomplish with a field.

Another example is, for example, a Discount property on an Order class. It could return the discount based on the current user. E.g.

public int Discount
{
if (CurrentFictitiousUser == "Imar")
{
return 500;
}
return 100;
}

That is, I get a 500 euro discount, while others get just 100.

Finally, for validation, think of an e-mail address (as shown in the earlier posts I mentioned). With a field you can't validate, with a property you can.

Hope this helps. If not, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...ns0=1&redirs=0

Imar