Automatic Properties in C#

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Back To Basics

Automatic properties were introduced in C# 3.0 as a convenience to developers.

C# and Visual Basic .Net provide two ways for a class to maintain state: Fields and Properties.

A field is a simply a public variable defined inside a class, such as in the following example

public string foo;

A property looks much like a field to the outside world, but exposes two methods – a “getter” to allow you to retrieve the value of the property and a “setter” to allow you to assign a value to the property. The following sample demonstrates how to implement a read-write property in C#.

private string _firstName;
public string FirstName
{
    get
    {
        return _firstName;
    }
    set
    {
        _firstName = value;
    }
}

This is a common use of property getters and setters – to assign and retrieve the value from a private variable. Because there is no extra logic in these methods, similar functionality could be achieved using a field, but I prefer to use properties in case I decide later to add some validations or calculations to the setter or getter. Making a change like that to a property will not break the class signature, forcing a recompile of dependent objects.

But this is a lot of typing for such simple functionality. So much in fact that Visual Studio 2005 provided a right-click accelerator to type much of it for you.

Beginning with C# 3.0, automatic properties provide a shorthand notation for this functionality.  Simply provide the scope, the type and the name of the property, followed by “{get; set; }” and the framework will automatically create a private variable for you and provide code to save and retrieve to/from that private variable. This is all done behind the scenes for us so we don’t need to write any of this code.  Below is a sample of the code we need to write for a public property.

public string FirstName { get; set; }

To make a property read-only, simply omit the "set" keyword. To make it write-only, omit the "get" keyword. Below is syntax for the same property if I wanted it to be read-only.

public string FirstName { get; }

The only disadvantage to automatic properties is that the rest of the code in our class no longer has access to the private variables create by the framework. Even from within the same class, we must go through the public property in order to get or set the private variable.

This is a small price to pay for the amount of code we are saving.

Automatic properties not only require less typing, they are far easier to read when your class has a bunch of properties. Which of the following easier to read?

public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
public string StreetAddress { get; set; }
public string City { get; set; }
public string State { get; set; }
public string Zip { get; set; }

or

private string _firstName;
public string FirstName
{
    get
    {
        return _firstName;
    }
    set
    {
        _firstName = value;
    }
}

private string _lastName;
public string LastName
{
    get
    {
        return _lastName;
    }
    set
    {
        _lastName = value;
    }
}

private string _streetAddress;
public string StreetAddress
{
    get
    {
        return _streetAddress;
    }
    set
    {
        _streetAddress = value;
    }
}

private string _city;
public string City
{
    get
    {
        return _city;
    }
    set
    {
        _city = value;
    }
}

private string _state;
public string State
{
    get
    {
        return _state;
    }
    set
    {
        _state = value;
    }
}

private string _zip;
public string Zip
{
    get
    {
        return _zip;
    }
    set
    {
        _zip = value;
    }
}

I think you’ll agree that it is far easier to read and understand the more terse syntax of the first example.  And code that is easier to understand is easier to maintain.

Because both syntax versions compile to the same Intermediate Language, I recommend always using the newer Automatic Properties syntax when you create properties that do nothing more than save and retrieve state.

Download the following sample code to see automatic properties in action: DemoAutomaticProperties.zip (26.83 KB)