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c#design-patternscollectionsreadonlyreadonly-collection

Pattern for forcing adding to collection through method in C#


I have a class with a collection member. I would like to prevent external code from modifying this collection directly, instead using methods (which can perform the appropriate validation etc).

This is harder than I thought. Here is the solution I am using. Can you please tell me if there are better ways to do this common thing? It all just seems a little overengineered.

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Collections.ObjectModel;
public class Foo
  {
    private List<Bar> _bars = new List<Bar>();

    public ReadOnlyCollection<Bar> Bars { get { return _bars.AsReadOnly(); } } 

    public void AddBar(Bar bar) //black sheep
    {
      //Insert validation logic here
      _bars.Add(bar);
    }
  }

Solution

  • I think it's a good solution. This approach is discussed by Martin Fowler here Incapculate collection