Learning C#

Encapsulating Data with Properties

It is generally desirable to designate the member variables of a class as private. This means that only member methods of that class can access their value. You make member variables private to support data hiding, which is part of the encapsulation of a class.

Object-oriented programmers are told that member variables should be private. That is fine, but how do you provide access to this data to your clients? The answer for C# programmers is properties. Properties allow clients to access class state as if they were accessing member fields directly, while actually implementing that access through a class method.

This is ideal. The client wants direct access to the state of the object. The class designer, however, wants to hide the internal state of the class in class fields and provide indirect access through a method. The property provides both: the illusion of direct access for the client and the reality of indirect access for the class developer.

By decoupling the class state from the method that accesses that state, the designer is free to change the internal state of the object as needed. When the Time class is first created, the Hour value might be stored as a member variable. When the class is redesigned, the Hour value might be computed or retrieved from a database. If the client had direct access to the original Hour member variable, the change to computing the value would break the client. By decoupling and forcing the client ...