{"id":566,"date":"2004-02-16T21:40:47","date_gmt":"2004-02-17T01:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.cephas.net\/?p=566"},"modified":"2004-02-16T21:40:47","modified_gmt":"2004-02-17T01:40:47","slug":"c-public-properties-vs-java-getx-and-setx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/2004\/02\/16\/c-public-properties-vs-java-getx-and-setx\/","title":{"rendered":"C# Public Properties vs. Java getX() and setX()"},"content":{"rendered":"

Martin Fowler<\/a> blogged<\/a> about C# properties<\/a> a couple weeks back saying that he “.. liked the notion of properties right from the start..<\/i>” because it’s “.. much more natural to write obj.X = other.X.<\/i>” Further, ” … from a language point of view, properties and fields look the same. So if I have a field x which I can just read and write to, I can just declare it as a field. I don’t worry about this violating encapsulation, because should I wish to do something more fancy I can just replace it with a property later. It all saves a lot of typing of stupid accessor functions.<\/i>” For those of you who have never used C#, instead of writing this in Java:
\n
\n\/\/ Java getter & setter
\nprivate String foo;
\npublic String getFoo() {
\n  return this.foo;
\n}
\npublic void setFoo(String foo) {
\n  this.foo = foo;
\n}
\n\/\/ access the private variable foo like this:
\nbar = obj.getFoo();
\n<\/code>
\nyou can write this:
\n
\n\/\/ C# public property
\nprivate String _foo;
\npublic String Foo {
\n  get {  return _foo; }
\n  set {  _foo = value; }
\n}
\n\/\/ access the private variable _foo like this:
\nbar = obj.Foo;
\n<\/code>
\nI initially liked this feature of C# as well, it definitely seems more natural to use properties. Also, like Martin mentions, it saves you from having to make decisions about encapsulation.. do you use a getX()\/setX() method or do I just mark it as public? With C#, you can change the implementation without changing your published API.<\/p>\n

Martin points out that in this case beauty is only skin deep. If you use reflection to access the public properties or fields of a C# class, you might be surprised to see that the implementation does in fact change. In the example above, the property ‘Foo’ gets turned into 2 methods: get_Foo() and set_Foo(), which you can see using reflection:
\n
\nType type = (typeof(YourClassName));
\nMemberInfo [] members;
\nmembers = type.GetMembers(BindingFlags.Public|BindingFlags.Instance);
\nConsole.WriteLine( \"\\nThe public instance members of class '{0}' are : \\n\", type);
\nfor (int i =0 ; i
\nMartin ends by noting \"... now I have to write stupid accessor functions for accessible data values.<\/i>\" which is something that your IDE can do for you. In Eclipse, declare your private instance variables and then right click --> Source --> Generate Getter & Setter...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Martin Fowler blogged about C# properties a couple weeks back saying that he “.. liked the notion of properties right from the start..” because it’s “.. much more natural to write obj.X = other.X.” Further, ” … from a language point of view, properties and fields look the same. So if I have a field … Continue reading C# Public Properties vs. Java getX() and setX()<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17,3,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cephas.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}