Question

I am not sure what exactly the issue is here. I am working with 2 strings and I keeping getting the error “A field initializer cannot reference the non-static field, method, or property ‘Captcha.Capture.CaptureTime'”.

Here’s a snippet from the code:

string CaptureTime = DateTime.Now.Month.ToString() + "-" + DateTime.Now.Day.ToString() + "-" + DateTime.Now.Year.ToString() + "-" + DateTime.Now.Hour.ToString() + DateTime.Now.Minute.ToString() + DateTime.Now.Second.ToString();


string SaveFormat = Properties.Settings.Default.SaveFolder + "Screenshot (" + CaptureTime + ")." + Properties.Settings.Default.ImageFormat;

I won’t go into detail as to why I am using the strings in this particular way. Everything works fine. I’m guessing it has something to do with a string being within another string? It might be completely obvious but I really have no clue. Any ideas?

Answer 1

No, it’s nothing to do with that – it’s just that instance field initializers can’t use other instance fields or instance methods. Here’s a simple example:

class Test 
{
    int x = 0;
    int y = x + 1;
}

It’s probably simplest to move the initialization into a constructor body instead. By the way, you shouldn’t access DateTime.Now several times like that in one initializer – it could change between calls, leading to horrible results. Use a local variable instead – which again is easier done from a constructor:

string CaptureTime;
string SaveFormat;

public YourType()
{
    DateTime now = DateTime.Now;

    CaptureTime = now.Month + "-" + now.Day + "-" + now.Year + "-" + 
        now.Hour.ToString() + now.Minute.ToString() + now.Second.ToString();
    SaveFormat = Properties.Settings.Default.SaveFolder + 
        "Screenshot (" + CaptureTime + ")." + 
        Properties.Settings.Default.ImageFormat;
}

By the way, a simpler way to produce CaptureTime would be:

CaptureTime = now.ToString("MM-dd-yyyy-HHmmss");