2009-01-24 Method or Property

2009-01-24 method-or-property

# Title: Method or Property
# Author: Mikael Lundin
# Link: http://blog.mikaellundin.name/2009/01/24/method-or-property.html

Example1.cs

// Property is data of an empty string value
string s = string.Empty;

// Action returns normalized string
s.Normalize();

Example2.cs

public class User
{
 private string username;
 public string Username
 {
  get
  {
   return this.username;
  }
 }
}

Example3.cs

public IEnumerable<User> Users
{
 get
 {
  IList<User> result = new List<User>();

  using (DbConnection connection = dbFactory.GetDbConnection())
  using (DbCommand command = dbFactory.CreateCommand(connection))
  {
   command.CommandText = "SELECT username FROM user";

   using(DbDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader())
   {
    while (reader.Read())
    {
     User user = new User { Username = reader.GetString(0) };
     result.Add(user);
    }
   }
  }

  return result;
 }
}

Example4.cs

private bool isDataSourceLoaded;

private IEnumerable dataSource;
public IEnumerable DataSource
{
 get
 {
  // A significant side effect where the GET-property populates the field
  if (this.isDataSourceLoaded)
  {
   this.dataSource = GetUsers();
   this.isDataSourceLoaded = true;
  }

  return this.dataSource;
 }
}