Question

I have a Person object with two constructors – one takes an int (personId), the other a string (logonName). I would like another constructor that takes a string (badgeNumber). I know this can’t be done, but seems it might be a common situation. Is there a graceful way of handling this? I suppose this would apply to any overloaded method. Code:

public class Person {     public Person() {}      public Person(int personId)     {         this.Load(personId);     }      public Person(string logonName)     {         this.Load(logonName);     }      public Person(string badgeNumber)     {         //load logic here...     } 

…etc.

Answer 1

You might consider using custom types.

For example, create LogonName and BadgeNumber classes.

Then your function declarations look like…

public Person(LogonName ln) {     this.Load(ln.ToString()); }  public Person(BadgeNumber bn) {     //load logic here... } 

Such a solution might give you a good place to keep the business logic that governs the format and usage of these strings.