Question

I came across a code section where the method declaration is as shown below;

   public MethodName(
        ISessionAwareRepo<MCC_Message> param1,
        ISessionAwareRepo<MCC_User> param2,
        ISessionAwareRepo<MCC_Directory> param3,
        ISessionAwareRepo<MCC_MessageInDirectory> param4,
        ISessionAwareRepo<MCC_Conversation> param5,
        ISessionAwareRepo<MCC_MessageRecipient> param6)
        : this(null, param1, param2, param3,
        param4, param5, param6)

I do not understand what does :this stand for in the method declaration. Can anyone please help?

Answer 1

This is called constructor chaining.

There is an overload of the constructor within the same class – the parameters are being passed in to the overload (so it gets executed before the body of the declaring constructor).

See Using Constructors on MSDN for more details.