Question

Okay I got the following class, but item is always null when I GetIstance(); Visual studio shows:

Field 'PageStyle.item' is never assigned to, and will always have its default value null

How can I resolve this? What am I doing wrong? Is there a better way of doing whats done below?

public class PageStyle
{

private static PageStyle _Instance = null;

// Instantiate variables relating to sitecore item paths.
Database webDB;
Sitecore.Data.Items.Item item;

// constructor
private PageStyle()
{
    if (webDB != null)
    {
        webDB = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("web");
        Sitecore.Data.Items.Item item = webDB.Items[StartItem];
    }
}

// Method that gets instance
public static PageStyle GetInstance()   
{       
    if (_Instance == null)          
    _Instance = new PageStyle();        
    return _Instance;   
}

private void InitializeWebDB()
{
   if (webDB == null)
   {
    webDB = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("web");
   }

}

private void InitializeStartItem()
{
    if (webDB != null)
    {
        item = webDB.Items[StartItem];
    }
}

public string StartItem
{
    get
    {
        return _startItem;
    }

    set
    {
        _startItem = value;
    }
}
}

Answer 1

You never set it to a value. You might think that you do, but you really only ever set a local variable with the same name. Also, you’re checking the webDB variable for non-null values at a time when it is always null:

// constructor
private PageStyle()
{
    if (webDB != null)
    {
        webDB = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("web");
        Sitecore.Data.Items.Item item = webDB.Items[StartItem];
    }
}

Change this to:

// constructor
private PageStyle()
{
    this.webDB = Sitecore.Configuration.Factory.GetDatabase("web");
    this.item = webDB.Items[StartItem];
}

I’m assuming that you always need a database instance, and that your if (webDB != null) was a mistake.