Question

In a base class, I want to define an abstract get, but at that point, I don’t care about the set. How can I define a setter in my child class?

I tried a few things, but I can’t get it to work. For example I tried :

public class BaseClass
{
    public abstract bool MyBool { get; }
}

public class ChildClass : BaseClass
{
    public override bool MyBool { get; protected set;}
}

And :

public class BaseClass
{
    public bool MyBool { abstract get; }
}

public class ChildClass : BaseClass
{
    public bool MyBool { override get; protected set;}
}

I know I can workaround this by not using automatic properties in the child class and directly setting the underlying field instead of creating a setter, but I’m looking for something better.

Edit: I don’t want to add an abstract setter in the BaseClass.

Answer 1

It may make more sense to use an interface rather than a base class. Then you simply have the classes that need to provide that property implement that interface.

For instance, you can create this interface:

public interface IBoolable {
     bool MyBool { get; }
}

Then it is still valid to implement the interface like so:

public class BoolableItem : IBoolable {
     public bool MyBool { get; protected set; }
}

Done this way, your code can safely assume anything that implements IBoolable has a property called MyBool that is at minimum read-only.