Question

I have a second window which opens when a certain staffname is searched for, this window prompts you to choose between the 2 staff members with the same name. The window then needs to return a value to the parent window to populate a datatemplate with relating data from the xml file.

I’ve tried to create a string which will be updated with a value depending on which button is clicked, this string can then be returned to the calling method on the first window and populate binding data in the Linq to Xml query.

But when it runs it causes a stackoverflow exception and that it could be an infinite loop. I’m not sure enough about c# to know what to change.

public partial class Choice : Window
{
    private string StaffChoice;

    public Choice()
    {                      
        InitializeComponent();
    }
    public string staffChoice
    {
        get { return this.StaffChoice; }
        set { staffChoice = StaffChoice; }
    }

    private void btnMRG_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        StaffChoice = "MRG";
        this.Close();
    }

    private void btnRPG_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        StaffChoice = "RPG";
        this.Close();
    }
}

Any help or suggestions would be great!

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Firstly, your naming conventions are wrong – the field should be called staffChoice and the property should be called StaffChoice. Please read the .NET naming conventions for more information. However, now look at your property closely:

public string staffChoice
{
    get { return this.StaffChoice; }
    set { staffChoice = StaffChoice; }
}

What do you think the setter does? There are two problems with it:

• It ignores the value that you’re trying to set it to.
• It calls itself recursively.

You could fix this by keeping the manually-declared field, fixing the naming conventions, and changing the property to set the variable to value like this:

private string staffChoice;

public string StaffChoice
{
    get { return staffChoice; }
    set { staffChoice = value; }
}

However, it would be simpler to use an automatically implemented property:

public string StaffChoice { get; set; }

This will create the backing field and the getter/setter for you automatically.