C# 2.0 Features: Property Accessor Accessibility Modifiers

Introduction

C# 2.0 supports access modifiers for property accessors, which means now you can set access levels to get and set accessors of a property. For example, I can write a property something like this.

public string LoginName
{
    get { return loginName; }
    protected set { loginName = value; }
}

So now I can set the LoginName property from any class derived from the class that has this property, but I won't be able to set this property from other classes. This feature was not supported in the previous version of C#.

I created a class called ABaseClass, which has the LoginName property.

class ABaseClass
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Property Access Modifiers
    /// </summary>
    private string loginName;

    /// <summary>
    /// Login Name
    /// </summary>
    public string LoginName
    {
        get { return loginName; }
        protected set { loginName = value; }
    }
}

Now I create a new class, which is derived from ABaseClass, and in this class, I set set LoginName property.

class ADerivedClass : ABaseClass
{
    public void SetPrivateProperty()
    {
        base.LoginName = "mcb";
    }
}

If I try to set the property value from other classes, I get the following error.