Question

When I do the following in a class:

public string ModifiedBy { get; set; }

How does C# store the data. Does the compiler generate a backing variable, how is it named and do I have access to it without using get; set?

Answer 1

You don’t have access to it without reflection, but if you – this is how you can do it:

using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Linq;
using System.Reflection;

class Program
{
    internal class MyClass
    {
        public string MyProperty { get; set; }
    }

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        foreach (var mi in
                typeof(MyClass).GetMembers(BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance)
                    .Where(m => m is FieldInfo))
        {
            Debug.WriteLine(mi.Name);
        }

        MyClass o = new MyClass();
        var fi = (FieldInfo)typeof(MyClass).GetMember(
            "<MyProperty>k__BackingField", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic)[0];
        fi.SetValue(o, "Success");
        Debug.WriteLine(o.MyProperty);
    }
}

This gives the following output:

<MyProperty>k__BackingField
Success