Question

I have a base class that has a subclass (could be a struct i suppose but not sure if it’s appropriate) and a method.

class Base 
{
    protected class SubClass 
    {
        public string word;
        public int number;
    }

    protected void SomeMethod()
    {
        this.SubClass.word //this is where I'm struggling
    }
}

Then i have a couple child classes that implement my baseClass, instantiate the Base.SubClass and add some values to the instantiated class.

class ChildClass1 : Base
{
    public childSubClass = new SubClass();

    public void DoSomethingRidiculous()
    {
        childSubClass.word = "WhoFarted";
    }
} 

class ChildClass2 : Base
{
    public childSubClass = new SubClass();

    public void DoSomethingRidiculous()
    {
        childSubClass.word = "ItStinks";
    }
}

If possible, I would like to be able to get the value of SubClass.word from within the Base class. I think that my attempt at implementing my idea is probably wrong.

Answer 1

I’m not sure that you really need subclassing / class nesting. Just move out class SubClass declaration and declare protected field/property of SubClass type instead.

public class SubClass 
{
   public string word;
   public int number;
}

public class Base 
{
    protected SubClass subClassInstance = new SubClass();

    protected void SomeMethod()
    {
        this.subClassInstance.word //this is where I'm struggling
    }
}

Then you can access subClassInstance inside both ChildClass1 and ChildClass2