This sounds like the friend
access modifier, which C# doesn't have. The closest I've seen to this in C# is to have the "unrelated" class be an interface and have a private implementation within a class. Something like this:
public interface IWidget
{
void DoSomethingPublic();
}
public class SomeObject
{
private ObjectWidget _myWidget = new ObjectWidget();
public IWidget MyWidget
{
get { return _myWidget; }
}
private class ObjectWidget
{
public void DoSomethingPublic()
{
// implement the interface
}
public void DoSomethingPrivate()
{
// this method can only be called from within SomeObject
}
}
}
Code external to SomeObject
can interact with MyWidget
and sees anything that's on the IWidget
interface, but code internal to SomeObject
can also non-interface public members on MyWidget
.