Question

My manager has asked me if it is good practice to use a property with a setter, but no getter.

public class PropertyWrapper
{   
    private MyClass _field;

    public MyClass Property
    {
        set { _field = value; } 
    }

    public string FirstProperty
    {
        get { return _field.FirstProperty; } 
    }

    public string SecondProperty
    {
        get { return _field.SecondProperty; } 
    }
}

He would be using other properties to expose properties from a private field, set by this setter.

My suggestion was to just use a private field and set it in the constructor, which works fine in this scenario. If I needed to have a constructed object first (maybe even using polymorphism) I would still prefer a Load method, rather than a getter-less property.

But I’m interested. We’re both very concerned by best-practices and try to make sure our code is standarised. Does anyone have any official articles about getter-less properties? Or better still – an example of this usage in the .NET Framework itself?

Answer 1

Official article:
Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries ->
Member Design Guidelines ->
Property Design

Do not provide set-only properties.

If the property getter cannot be provided, use a method to implement
the functionality instead. The method name should begin with Set
followed by what would have been the property name. For example,
AppDomain has a method called SetCachePath instead of having a
set-only property called CachePath.