I’m a beginner programmer, apologies for any stupidity.
Having come from a python background creating small projects with only a few classes, I would have all of my code in one file most of the time.
I’ve been learning c# recently, and I’m writing a reasonably large console application (10,000 lines +). I obviously can’t put everything in one file here, but I’m not sure how I would go about separating the project into smaller segments.
The way I have done this so far, is to create a new project for each namespace within my solution, and split each class into a separate file accordingly. So far, I have around four namespaces. I have written each namespace independently, with a view to use each one going forward in other projects.
I’m at the stage now where I would like to piece together each namespace to build my console application. How do I go about doing this ?
Also, am I structuring my code in the right way ?
Also + 1, is it possible to use files located in a completely different directory within a project ?
Many thanks in advance.
When you start with a namespace, you’ll usually use your company or organization name (say, “A”). If you have multiple products/projects and are creating code for that item, you’ll want to add a qualifier (say “B”, “C”, etc., so you’ll have A.B, A.C, etc.).
Then general approach is that you want to group types together in a namespace that are related. If you create a type and it is general purpose/utility/one-off solution to a common problem, you’ll want to keep it in a broader scoped namespace. When you find you are creating a number of types to support some feature or purpose, you may wish to create a narrow namespace to contain those types. For example, let’s say you need to write several data access components for A.B, which contains data transfer objects, data access objects, etc. You may wish, then, to put those types in something like A.B.DataAccess.
However, remember that .NET uses an OOP paradigm. One OOP paradigm is code reuse. So if you access data in both A.B and A.C, you’ll do well to create reusable data access components to encourage code reuse in both projects. In that case, you may wish to have a project such as A.Common, which contains common types used by any of your products, that contain general use, generic, or abstract concepts that can be utilized in A.B, A.C, etc.
Let me try and go further with that example.
That’s a pretty simplistic and crude example, but hopefully it will help you visualize the relationship between assemblies and namespaces.
Some other tips:
Finally, you should continue to create only one type per source file.