References between objects

Question

I have been trying to figure this out for days.

What I have is three classes, let's call them City, House, Room:

class City
{
    List<House> Houses { get; set; }
    string Name { get; set; }
}

class House
{
    List<Room> Rooms { get; set; }
    string Name { get; set; }
}

class Room
{
    string Name { get; set; }
}

So, here we have a city, which holds a lot of houses. And the houses holds rooms.

Let's say for instance I get a room object, which has a name (and is grouped in the whole system with City->House->Room)

How would I be able to reference the City-objects Name variable from that Room object I have?

Like some magic way of doing "Room.House.City.Name"

I really hope you understand what I'm trying to ask, it's been driving me crazy for the last couple of days.

Answer 1

You can add a House property to your room and City property to your House like this:

class House
{
    List<Room> Rooms { get; set; }
    string Name { get; set; }
    public City City { get; set; }
 }

class Room
{
    string Name { get; set; }
    public House House { get; set; }
}

And when you are adding some house and room for example:

    City myCity = new City();
    House myHouse = new House { City = myCity, Name = "myHome" };
    Room myRoom = new Room { House = myHouse, Name = "myRoom" };
    myHouse.Rooms = new List<Room>();    
    myHouse.Rooms.Add(myRoom);
    myCity.Houses = new List<House>();        
    myCity.Houses.Add(myHouse);
    // here you can use:
    myRoom.House.City.Name

But this is not so elegant and it's hard to add new Houses and Rooms.Additionally I would add some methods to make it easy for example in House class:

class House 
{
     public void AddRoom(Room room)
     {
        room.House = this;
        if (Rooms == null)
            Rooms = new List<Room>();
        Rooms.Add(room);
     }
}

And then I don't need to define a Room like this:

Room myRoom = new Room { House = myHouse, Name = "myRoom" };

Instead:

myHouse.AddRoom(new Room { Name = "myRoom" });