How to hide the backing field from the rest of the class

Question

Is there any way to enforce the rest of my class to access the property setter rather than the backing field? Consider the following clumsy code:

public class Brittle
{
    private string _somethingWorthProtecting;
    public string SomethingWorthProtecting
    {
        get { return _somethingWorthProtecting; }
        set
        {
            _somethingWorthProtecting = value;
            ReallyNeedToDoThisEverTimeTheValueChanges();
        }
    }

    public void OhDearWhatWasIThinking()
    {
        _somethingWorthProtecting = "Shooting myself in the foot here, aren't I?";
    }
}

As far as I know, C# does not provide any mechanism to prevent the class developer from making this mistake. (Auto-properties are clearly not an option in this situation.) Is there a design pattern or practice that can help safeguard against such inadvertant end-arounds?

*"to prevent the class developer from making this mistake"* - that's overkill, seriously. If person modifying that class, need help like this, then rather don't let this person modify anything. Comments should suffice. From other side you can give this field *dedicated* name: `_doNotModifyMePlx`. — Sinatr, Jun 08 '17 at 14:28

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 08 '17 at 14:13

2

you can move that logic to an abstract base class:

public abstract class Brittle
{
    private string _somethingWorthProtecting;
    public string SomethingWorthProtecting 
    {
        get { return _somethingWorthProtecting; }
        set
        {
            _somethingWorthProtecting = value;
            ReallyNeedToDoThisEverTimeTheValueChanges();
        }
    }

    //.....
}

then you can be sure no one will instantiate this class, and derived classes will not be able to access the private field.

public class BrittleDerived : Brittle
{
     public void DoSomething() 
     {
        // cannot access _somethingWorthProtecting;
     }
}

answered Jun 08 '17 at 14:13

Jonesopolis

25,034
12
68
112

1

Duplicate of the answer on this question: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3265833/993547 :) Two minds thinking the same. – Patrick Hofman Jun 08 '17 at 14:17
This solution gives nothing. One month later someone will try to add new functionality to the base class, and problem will back. – apocalypse Jun 08 '17 at 14:22
I mean, if someone has access to your codebase, there's only so many failsafes you can put in. If they want to destroy your code they can. – Jonesopolis Jun 08 '17 at 14:27

How to hide the backing field from the rest of the class

1 Answers1