How to create immutable objects in C#?

Question

In a question about Best practices for C# pattern validation, the highest voted answer says:

I tend to perform all of my validation in the constructor

Answer 1

C# 9 is coming up with new feature names as Record. Init-only properties are great if you want to make individual properties immutable. If you want the whole object to be immutable and behave like a value, then you should consider declaring it as a record:

public data class Person
{
    public string FirstName { get; init; }
    public string LastName { get; init; }
}

The data keyword on the class declaration marks it as a record.

Reference: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/welcome-to-c-9-0/#records

Answer 2

This question has two aspects:

1. Immutable type when you instantiate object
2. Immutable type when EF instantiate object

The first aspect demands sturcture like this:

public class MyClass
{
  private readonly string _myString;
  public string MyString
  {
    get
    {
      return _myString;
    }
  }

  public MyClass(string myString)
  {
    // do some validation here

    _myString = myString;
  }
}

Now the problem - EF. EF requires parameterless constructor and EF must have setters on properties. I asked very similar question here.

Your type must look like:

public class MyClass
{
  private string _myString;
  public string MyString
  {
    get
    {
      return _myString;
    }
    private set
    {
      _myString = value;
    }
  }

  public MyClass(string myString)
  {
    // do some validation here

    _myString = myString;
  }

  // Not sure if you can change accessibility of constructor - I can try it later
  public MyClass()
  {}
}

You must also inform EF about private setter of MyString property - this is configured in properties of enitity in EDMX file. Obviously there will be no validation when EF will materialize objects from DB. Also you will not be able to use methods like ObjectContext.CreateObject (you will not be able to fill the object).

Entity Object T4 template and default code generation create factory method CreateMyClass instead of constructor with paremeters. POCO T4 template doesn't generate factory method.

I didn't try this with EF Code first.

Answer 3

@Eric Lippert Good comment, but in addition in answer to the question:

What kind of object would you have that you do not need to modify the values at some point? I'm guessing not a model class, correct? I've had to change the name of a person in my database - this wouldn't fit with this idea.

Let's say you have a large datastructure and you want to query its information, but it's changing all the time. You need some kind of locking system to make sure that you don't say try and count the total in the system while somebody is depositing something from one place to another. (Say a warehouse management system)

And that's hard to do because these things always affect things in unexpected ways, the data changing under your feet.

What if you could freeze your large datastructure when you're not updating it, so that no memory can be altered and it is paused at a consistent state? Now when you want to change it again you have to copy the datastructure to a new place, and it's fairly large, so that's a downside, but the upside is you won't have to lock anything because the new copy of the data goes unshared until it has been updated. This means anyone at any point can read the latest copy of the datastructure, doing complex things.

So yep very useful concept if you hate dealing with concurrency issues and don't have too much data to deal with. (E.g. if 1MB of data and updating 10/sec that's 10MB of data being copied)

Answer 4

Read this series by Eric Lippert https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/ericlippert/immutability-in-c-part-one-kinds-of-immutability.

Answer 5

The interesting question here is your question from the comments:

What kind of object would you have that you do not need to modify the values at some point? I'm guessing not a model class, correct? I've had to change the name of a person in my database - this wouldn't fit with this idea.

Well, consider things that are already immutable. Numbers are immutable. Once you have the number 12, it's 12. You can't change it. If you have a variable that contains 12, you can change the contents of the variable to 13, but you are changing the variable, not the number 12.

Same with strings. "abc" is "abc", and it never changes. If you have a variable that contains "abc", you can change it to "abcd", but that doesn't change "abc", that changes the variable.

What about a list? {12, "abc"} is the list that is 12 followed by "abc", and that list never changes. The list {12, "abcd"} is a different list.

And that's where things go off the rails. Because in C# you can do it either way. You can say that there is referential identity between those two lists if lists are allowed to mutate their contents without changing their identity.

You hit the nail right on the head when you talk about the "model". Are you modeling something that changes? If so, then it is possibly wise to model it with a type that changes. The benefit of that is that the characteristics of the model match the system being modeled. The down side is that it becomes very tricky to do something like a "rollback" functionality, where you "undo" a change.

That is, if you mutate {12, "abc"} to {12, "abcd"} and then want to roll back the mutation, how do you do it? If the list is immutable you just keep around both values and choose which one you want to be the "current" value. If the list is mutable then you have to have the undo logic keep around an "undo function" which knows how to undo the mutation.

As for your specific example, you certainly can create an immutable database. How do you change the name of someone in your immutable database? You don't. You create a new database that has the data you want in it. The trick with immutable types is to do so efficiently, without copying billions of bytes. Immutable data structure design requires finding clever ways to share state between two nearly-identical structures.

Answer 6

How exactly would this work if you want to validate in the constructor of your Entity Framework generated model class?

It wouldn't work in this context because EF requires the properties of the entity class be public otherwise it can't instantiate it.

But you're welcome to use immutable objects further in your code.