Properties in VB.NET

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Properties are one of the fundamental things any object oriented language must support. Properties are not new for the VB6 programmer, but I feel that properties have not really been given the importance they deserve. Properties abstract the data from being manipulated directly by the client. Furthermore, properties also facilitate the defining of actions and data of the interface. VB.NET properties are very simple to understand and define. For example: 

Option Strict Off
Imports System
Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic 

    Class MyServer
      Dim vfname As String

      Public Property fname()
       Get
        fname = vfname
       End Get 

       Set
        vfname = value
       End Set
      End Property

    End Class
 
    Class MyClient

      Shared Sub main()
        Dim o As New MyServer()
        o.fname = "www.DotNetExtreme.com"
        msgbox(o.fname)
      End Sub

    End Class

Further, adding simple syntax like ReadOnly or WriteOnly specifies that the property if readonly or writeonly. For example: 

      Public Readonly Property fname()
       Get
        fname = vfname
       End Get 

      End Property
Source: DotNetExtreme.com

This was first published in May 2003

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