#252 – Automatic Properties

The typical syntax for a property implementation in C# is to define the public interface for the property and then have the implementation of the get and set accessors for the property read/write to a private backing variable.

        private string name;
        public string Name
        {
            get { return name; }
            set { name = value; }
        }

C# provides a shortcut for this structure through the use of automatic properties.  You can avoid declaring the private backing variable and implementing the get/set accessors by simply declaring the get/set accessors without a body.

        public string Name { get; set; }

When you declare a property this way, it appears exactly the same to any client code.  The underlying code generated by the compiler is also the same–a public property with a backing variable–but you don’t actually have access to the backing variable.