How do I implement a method like myCountry.Towns.Add();

Question

I have a class called Country . I can instantiate it by Country myCountry = new County(); It has method AddTown(string townName) { ... } which can be called like myCountry.AddTown(London); How can I add an alternative method with identical functionality but which is called like myCountry.Towns.Add(London); I cant figure out how to implement the '.Towns. ' part of the naming structure.

Vulpes · Answer

That's done by creating a 'strongly typed' DataSet which inherits from the standard DataSet class. Properties are then created for this derived class which expose all the DataTables which it contains. So Customers is a DataTable in the Northwind DataSet. I wouldn't bother trying to mimic this unless your Country class contains a lot of sub-collections such as Towns Provinces Rivers Mountains etc.

Eric Brough · Answer

I'm just trying to mimic the syntax that Microsoft seem to use quite a bit. e.g. northwindDataSet1.Customers.Rows.Add(newCustomersRow); . I have a feeling that a Collection may be involved here - something I've not tackled before.

Jignesh Trivedi · Answer

hi are you looking extension method kind of solution? like string has inbuilt extension method called ToUpper() ToLower() etc

Vulpes · Answer

I'd imagine your class looks something like this at present: class Country { private List _towns; public Country() { _towns = new List (); } public void AddTown(string town) { _towns.Add(town); } } If that's the case then you could implement the additional functionality as follows: class Country { private List _towns; public List Towns { get { return _towns; } } public Country() { _towns = new List (); } public void AddTown(string town) { _towns.Add(town); } } You can then do: Country myCountry = new Country(); myCountry.Towns.Add(London);