Question

Problem 1:

I have a simple winforms app and I want to DataBind my Person.Name property to a textbox. Name is of type StringField. I originally defined the Name property as String. The data binding works great on value types such as String. I would like the StringField.Value property to be the default property of StringField. I want to see the value of StringField.Value in the textBox rather than the text ‘FieldApp.StringField’.

Problem 2:

I would like to be able to assign a string to a StringField using operator =. This assignment would result in the StringField.Value member being set.

Can this be accomplished?

using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using System.Windows.Forms;  namespace FieldApp {     public class StringField     {         public string Value { get; set; }         }      public class Person     {          //private String _Name;         //public String Name         //{         //    get { return _Name; }         //    set { _Name = value; }         //}          //public Person(string name)         //{         //    Name = name;         //}          private StringField _Name;         public StringField Name         {             get { return _Name; }             set { _Name = value; }         }          public Person(string name)         {             Name = new StringField();             Name.Value = name;         }     }      public partial class FieldAppForm : Form     {         Person person = new Person('steve');          public FieldAppForm()         {             InitializeComponent();         }          private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             //our form contains a button1 and textBox1              //this compiles             person.Name.Value = 'steve';              //this does not. Is there anyway to accomplish this?             person.Name = 'steve';              //steve appears in the textbox              textBox1.DataBindings.Add('Text', person, 'Name.Value');              //FieldApp.StringField appears in the textbox              textBox1.DataBindings.Add('Text', person, 'Name');         }     } } 

Answer 1

You could create an implicit operator overload. Then you can create StringField from strings like this:

StringField field = 'value of new object'; string value=(string)field; 

Know that this creates a new StringField object. I wouldn’t necessarily advice you to do this.

[System.Diagnostics.DebuggerDisplay('{Value}')] public class StringField {     public string Value { get; set; }     public static implicit operator StringField(string s)     {         return new StringField { Value = s };     }      public static explicit operator string(StringField f)     {         return f.Value;     }     public override string ToString()     {         return Value;     } }