The way we use properties irritates me sometimes. I like to think of them as the equivalent of Java's getFoo() and setFoo() methods. But they are not.
If the Property Usage Guidelines state that properties should be able to be set in any order so serialization can work, then they're useless for setter-time validation. If you come from a background where you like to prevent an object from allowing itself to ever get into an invalid state, then properties aren't your solution. Sometimes I fail to see just how they are better than public members, since we're so limited in what kinds of things we're supposed to do in properties.
To that end, I've always kind of wished (this is mostly thinking out loud here, I just kind of wish I could do something like this) that I could extend the property syntax somehow. Imagine something like this:
private string password;
public string Password
{
// Called when being set by a deserializer or a persistence
// framework
deserialize
{
// I could put some backward-compat hacks in here. Like
// weak passwords are grandfathered in without blowing up
this.password = value;
}
get
{
if (Thread.CurrentPrincipal.IsInRole("Administrator"))
{
return this.password;
}
else
{
throw new PermissionException();
}
}
set
{
if (MeetsPasswordRequirements(value))
{
throw new BlahException();
}
this.password = value;
}
serialize
{
return this.password;
}
}
I'm not sure if that's useful or what it accessing those would look like. But I just wish that I could do more with properties and really treat them like get and set methods.
