Question

I have read a bit about lazy loading in c# and this might seem like a very basic question, but I am wondering whether autoproperties are lazy loading per default. Eg.:

public Color MyColor { get; set; }

Or would I have to implement something along the lines of

private Color _color;
public Color MyColor
{
  get
  {
      if(_color==null)
      { 
       _color=new Color("red");
      }
      return _color;
  }
 }

Thanks
Thomas

Answer 1

Auto properties simply get a backing field generated by the compiler.

So, this:

public Color MyColor { get; set; }

Will end up like this:

private Color _color;
public Color MyColor
{
  get
  {
      return _color;
  }

  set
  {
      _color = value;
  }
 }

So they are not lazy loaded – you will need to implement this yourself.

You could instantiate the backing field like this:

private Color _color = new Color("red");

With auto properties, you could set a default using the constructor:

// in the constructor:
MyColor = new Color("red");