Best way to expose protected fields

Question

I have a base class like this:

 public class BaseModalCommand
 {

    protected object m_commandArgument;
    protected int m_commandID;
    protected int m_         


        

Answer 1

As best practice, your class fields should be marked as private and wrapped in a getter/setter property

so instead of

protected object m_commandArgument;

use

private object m_commandArgument;

protected object CommandArgument {get; set;}

Theres several advantages to this but a simple usage would be exception handling/validation in your setter.

e.g.

private string _email;
protected string Email
{ 
   get { return _email; }
   set 
   {
       if(value.IndexOf("@") > 0)
           _email = value;
       else
            throw new ArgumentException("Not a valid Email");
   }
}