Question

Im programming in C#.NET. I want to create a nested class that can access members of the instance that created it but I can’t seem to figure out how.

This is what I want to do:

Car x = new Car()
x.color = "red";
x.Door frontDoor = new x.Door();
MessageBox.Show(frontDoor.GetColor());    // So I want the method GetColor of the class Front Door to be able to access the color field/property of the Car instance that created it.

How do I do it? I tried nesting the Door class inside the Car class but it can’t access the members of the Car class that way. Do I need to make Car inherit the door class or something?

Answer 1

The easiest way is to give the Door type a reference back to the Car which created it.

For example:

class Car { 
  public string color;
  public Door Door() { return new Door(this); }
  class Door { 
    Car owner;
    Door(Car owner) { this.owner = owner; }
    string GetColor() { return owner.color; }
  }
}