Question

I have been coding classes like this:

public class ReportViewModel
    {
        public string Status;
        public string DataSource;
        public String DataStore { get; set; }
        public PageMeta PageMeta { get; set; }
        public ICollection<Question> List { get; set; } 
    } 

Note that most of the fields use { get; set; } except the first two which I let Visual Studio add for me.

What I am wondering is do I really need to use { get; set; }. It seems to me that VS2010 does not automatically add this so do I need it?

Answer 1

{ get; set; } indicate autoimplemented properties. In .NET there is a difference between properties and fields. Normally fields should be private. They are used for some specific implementation and should in most cases be internal to the class. Properties on the other hand are used to encapsulate behavior that is exposed to the consumers.