Lesson 35 - Properties

Lesson 35 - Properties

Properties are members that provide a flexible mechanism to read, write, or compute the values of private fields. Properties can be used as though they are public data members, but they are actually special methods called accessors. This enables data to be accessed easily while still providing the safety and flexibility of methods.

In this example, the class TimePeriod stores a time period. Internally the class stores the time in seconds, but a property called Hours is provided that allows a client to specify a time in hours. The accessors for the Hours property perform the conversion between hours and seconds.

class TimePeriod
{
private double seconds;

public double Hours
{
get { return seconds / 3600; }
set { seconds = value * 3600; }
}
}

class Program
{
static void Main()
{
TimePeriod t = new TimePeriod();

// Assigning the Hours property causes the 'set' accessor to be called.
t.Hours = 24;

// Evaluating the Hours property causes the 'get' accessor to be called.
System.Console.WriteLine("Time in hours: " + t.Hours);
}
}