How do I implement a method like myCountry.Towns.Add();

Eric Brough

I have a class called Country. I can instantiate it by Country myCountry = new County();

It has method, AddTown(string townName) { ... } which can be called like myCountry.AddTown("London");

How can I add an alternative method with identical functionality but which is called like myCountry.Towns.Add("London");

I cant figure out how to implement the '.Towns.' part of the naming structure.

4 Replies

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Vulpes12y ago
That's done by creating a 'strongly typed' DataSet which inherits from the standard DataSet class. Properties are then created for this derived class which expose all the DataTables which it contains.

So Customers is a DataTable in the Northwind DataSet.

I wouldn't bother trying to mimic this unless your Country class contains a lot of sub-collections such as Towns, Provinces, Rivers, Mountains etc.
Eric Brough12y ago
I'm just trying to mimic the syntax that Microsoft seem to use quite a bit. e.g. northwindDataSet1.Customers.Rows.Add(newCustomersRow); .

I have a feeling that a Collection may be involved here - something I've not tackled before.
Jignesh Trivedi12y ago
hi,
are you looking extension method kind of solution?
like string has inbuilt extension method called ToUpper(), ToLower() etc
Vulpes12y ago
I'd imagine your class looks something like this at present:

class Country
{
private List _towns;

public Country()
{
_towns = new List();
}

public void AddTown(string town)
{
_towns.Add(town);
}
}

If that's the case, then you could implement the additional functionality as follows:

class Country
{
private List _towns;

public List Towns { get { return _towns; } }

public Country()
{
_towns = new List();
}

public void AddTown(string town)
{
_towns.Add(town);
}
}

You can then do:

Country myCountry = new Country();
myCountry.Towns.Add("London");