C# Automatic Properties — setting defaults

Question

What's the easiest/straight-forward way of setting a default value for a C# public property?

// how do I set a default for this?

public string MyProperty { get; set; }

Please don't suggest that I use a private property & implement the get/set public properties. Trying to keep this concise, and don't want to get into an argument about why that's so much better. Thanks.

Answer 1

Set the default in your constructor:

this.MyProperty = <DefaultValue>;

Answer 2

Just initialize it in the constructor:

public class MyClass
{
    public string MyProperty { get; set; }

    public MyClass()
    {
        MyProperty = "default value";
    }
}

Note that if you have multiple constructors, you'll need to make sure that each of them either sets the property or delegates to another constructor which does.

Answer 3

Please don't suggest that I use a private property

That's the standard way to set such defaults. You might not like it, but that what even the automatic properties syntax does after compilation - it generates a private field and uses that in the getter and setter.

You can set the property in a constructor, which will be as close to a default as you can get.

Answer 4

No, it would be nice if you could just mark up the property to indicate the default value, but you can't. If you really want to use automatic properties, you can't set a default in property declaration.

The cleanest workaround I've come up with is to set the defaults in the constructor. It's still a little ugly. Defaults are not colocated with the property declaraion, and it can be a pain if you have multiple constructors, but that's still the best I've found

Answer 5

if you're going to use auto-implementation of properties, the only real option is to initialize the property values in the constructor(s).

Answer 6

As of C# 6.0 you can assign a default value to an auto-property.

public string MyProperty {get; set; } = "Default Value";