Question

I would like to force a set of classes to define three fields (of type string).
In an abstract class, I get that fields cannot be abstract and in an interface, I get an error saying that an interface cannot contain a field.
Is there no way to do this or am I not understanding this correctly? I’d rather not use methods because for some weird reason, the parentheses annoy me.

Answer 1

Like everyone else says, use properties instead of fields, but you can do something like I interpreted in the comments as follows for read-only members:

abstract public class Base
{
    abstract public string Foo { get; }
    abstract public string Bar { get; }
    abstract public string Baz { get; }
}

public class Derived : Base
{
    public override string Foo { get { return "foo"; } }
    public override string Bar { get { return "bar"; } }
    public override string Baz { get { return "baz"; } }
}

If you want the fields to be modifiable later, you’ll have to either use automatic properties or declare concrete backing fields and getter/setter pairs for each property.