Question

Possible Duplicate:
How do you give a C# Auto-Property a default value?

I have a property in a class like so

public String fontWeight { get; set; }

I want it’s default to be of "Normal"

Is there a way to do this in “automatic” style rather than the following

public String fontWeight {
    get { return fontWeight; } 
    set { if (value!=null) { fontWeight = value; } else { fontWeight = "Normal"; } }
}

Answer 1

No, an automatic property is just a plain getter and/or setter and a backing variable. If you want to put any kind of logic in the property, you have to use the regular property syntax.

You can use the ?? operator to make it a bit shorter, though:

private string _fontWeight;

public String FontWeight {
  get { return _fontWeight; } 
  set { _fontWeight = value ?? "Normal"; }
}

Note that the setter is not used to initialise the property, so if you don’t set the value in the constructor (or assign a value in the variable declaration), the default value is still null. You could make the check in the getter instead to get around this:

private string _fontWeight;

public String FontWeight {
  get { return _fontWeight ?? "Normal"; } 
  set { _fontWeight = value; }
}