Question

I know there are a lot of threads talking about this but so far I haven’t found one that helps my situation directly. I have members of the class that I need to access from both static and non-static methods. But if the members are non-static, I can’t seem to get to them from the static methods.

public class SomeCoolClass
{
    public string Summary = "I'm telling you";

    public void DoSomeMethod()
    {
        string myInterval = Summary + " this is what happened!";
    }

    public static void DoSomeOtherMethod()
    {
        string myInterval = Summary + " it didn't happen!";
    }
}

public class MyMainClass
{
    SomeCoolClass myCool = new SomeCoolClass();
    myCool.DoSomeMethod();

    SomeCoolClass.DoSomeOtherMethod();
}

How would you suggest I get Summary from either type of method?

Answer 1

How would you suggest I get Summary from either type of method?

You’ll need to pass myCool to DoSomeOtherMethod – in which case you should make it an instance method to start with.

Fundamentally, if it needs the state of an instance of the type, why would you make it static?