Forbid public Add and Delete for a List

Question

in my C#-project, I have a class which contains a List

public class MyClass
{
  public MyClass parent;
  public List children;
  ...
}
         


        

Answer 1

Make the list private, and create public methods to access its content from outside the class.

public class MyClass
{
    public MyClass Parent { get; private set; }

    private List _children = new List();
    public IEnumerable Children
    {
        get
        {
            // Using an iterator so that client code can't access the underlying list
            foreach(var child in _children)
            {
                yield return child;
            }
        }
    }

    public void AddChild(MyClass child)
    {
        child.Parent = this;
        _children.Add(child);
    }

    public void RemoveChild(MyClass child)
    {
        _children.Remove(child);
        child.Parent = null;
    }
}

By the way, avoid declaring public fields, because you can't control what client code does with them.