Where are static constructors used?

Suma M

13y2kVisual Basic .NET

Hi,

where are these used

5 Replies

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Vulpes13y ago
Accepted answer
Static constructors aren't often used except in libraries.

However, here's an example of use:

using System;
using System.Threading;

class MyClass
{
public static readonly DateTime FirstAccessed;

static MyClass()
{
Console.WriteLine("Static constructor called by system");
FirstAccessed = DateTime.Now;
}

public static void StaticMethod()
{
Console.WriteLine("StaticMethod called");
Console.WriteLine("FirstAccessed has been set to {0} by now", FirstAccessed);
}

public MyClass()
{
Console.WriteLine("Instance constructor called");
Console.WriteLine("The time now is {0}", DateTime.Now);
}
}

class Test
{
static void Main()
{
MyClass.StaticMethod();
Thread.Sleep(2000); // wait two seconds
MyClass mc = new MyClass();
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
Suma M13y ago
Thanks Vulpes and Ashish, Thanks for static constructor examples.. I have not seen people using normal constructors(not static) in classes
Ashish Shukla13y ago
A simple example is to take an example of a student class.Let's say there are six semesters in a course so each student will have same number of semesters.So as this is a common data that
we can initialize in a static constructor.

public class Student
{
public static int TotalSemesters;
static Student()
{
TotalSemesters=6;
System.Console.WriteLine("First Student created");
}
}

The above is only an example just to demonstrate one use of static constructors.A good example of a static constructor is a singleton class.
Suma M13y ago
Ashish, I have gone across many examples in this site and nowhere i have seen classes with constructors.
Ashish Shukla13y ago
Static constructor is called only once,the first time an instance of a class is created.So it is generally used to perform some initialization of static data or any other action that needs to be performed only once.

Common example is to initialize the application data that is used across the different pages.