What's the best way to store a group of constants that my program uses? [closed]

Answer 1

An empty static class is appropriate. Consider using several classes, so that you end up with good groups of related constants, and not one giant Globals.cs file.

Additionally, for some int constants, consider the notation:

[Flags]
enum Foo
{
}

As this allows for treating the values like flags.

Answer 2

If these Constants are service references or switches that effect the application behavior I would set them up as Application user settings. That way if they need to be changed you do not have to recompile and you can still reference them through the static properties class.

Properties.Settings.Default.ServiceRef

Answer 3

What I like to do is the following (but make sure to read to the end to use the proper type of constants):

internal static class ColumnKeys
{
    internal const string Date = "Date";
    internal const string Value = "Value";
    ...
}

Read this to know why const might not be what you want. Possible type of constants are:

• const fields. Do not use across assemblies (public or protected) if value might change in future because the value will be hardcoded at compile-time in those other assemblies. If you change the value, the old value will be used by the other assemblies until they are re-compiled.
• static readonly fields
• static property without set