Question

I was working on a public comments part of an application on Friday when I got a stack overflow error, which confused me so I thought I’d ask for help. And searching the web using the expression ‘stack overflow’ is a bit self-defeating!

I wanted to do an HtmlEncode on the set statement of the field in the class, before sending an instance of the class to be added to the database:

public class Feedback
{

    public Feedback() { }

    public string FeedbackComment
    {
        get { return FeedbackComment; }
        set {System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(value); }
    }

    // other fields 

    // methods
}

This was causing StackOverflow errors, I’ve fixed the error by changing the code to look like this:

public class Feedback
{

    public Feedback() { }

    private string feedbackComment;

    public string FeedbackComment
    {
        get { return feedbackComment; }
        set { feedbackComment = System.Web.HttpUtility.HtmlEncode(value); }
    }

    // other fields 

    // methods
} 

But I just wanted an explanation of why the first get/set statements were so recursive that they caused a stack overflow but when reverting the code to look more like c#2.0 worked? Can this be achieved with the shorter syntax and if so how?

This is my first question on SO – please try to be gentle!

Answer 1

The getter of the first example is returning the property itself, not a backing field.

// The property name is "FeedbackComment"
public string FeedbackComment
{
    // And here you are returning "FeedbackComment" which is
    // creating the stack overflow
    get { return FeedbackComment; }
}

Unfortunately there is no way to shorten what you have, automatically implemented properties (i.e. public String FeedbackComment { get; set; }) must have empty getter and setter blocks to be syntactically correct. There is nothing wrong with your second example – yes, it is a bit verbose but it is clear, concise, and gets the job done.