Question

Let’s say you have a class with a Uri property. Is there any way to get that property to accept both a string value and a Uri? How would you build it?

I’d like to be able to do something like one of the following, but neither are supported (using VB, since it lets you specify type in the Set declaration for the 2nd one):

Class MyClass      Private _link As Uri     'Option 1: overloaded property     Public Property Link1 As Uri         Get             return _link         End Get         Set(ByVal value As Uri)            _link = value         End Set     End Property      Public Property link1 As String         Get             return _link.ToString()         End Get         Set(Byval value As String)            _link = new Uri(value)         End Set    End Property     ' Option 2: Overloaded setter    Public Property link2 As Uri       Get           return _link       End Get       Set(Byval value As Uri)           _link = value       End Set       Set(Byval value As String)           _link = new Uri(value)       End Set End Class 

Given that those probably won’t be supported any time soon, how else would you handle this? I’m looking for something a little nicer than just providing an additional .SetLink(string value) method, and I’m still on .Net2.0 (though if later versions have a nice feature for this, I’d like to hear about it).

I can think of other scenarios where you might want to provide this kind of overload: a class with an SqlConnection member that lets you set either a new connection or a new connection string, for example.

Answer 1

Alternatively, you can of course forego overloading and just name the properties appropriately:

Public WriteOnly Property UriString() As String     Set(ByVal value As String)         m_Uri = new Uri(value)     End Set End Property 

Of course you don’t have to make this WriteOnly but it seems appropriate.