Question

I have a field in my model class that’s coded as follows:

    public string CreatedBy
    {
        get { return _CreatedBy; }
        set { _CreatedBy = value; Created = DateTime.Now; }
    }
    public DateTime? Created { get; set; }

When the CreatedBy field is populated then it fills out the Created date automatically. The problem for me is that if I again set the CreatedBy field (yes it can happen) then the date gets updated with the current date again.

Is there a way that I can make it so the CreatedBy and the Created fields can be populated just once?

Answer 1

Use a backing field and check whether the value has been set already – if so, leave it unchanged:

private DateTime? created;
public DateTime? Created 
{
    get { return created; }
    set { if (created == null) created = value; }
}