When do I need to use automatic poperties and when properties with propertychanged event ?

Question

Hello,

I am using wpf and its C sharp!

I have this in my Animal.cs clas

private string _animalName;

    public string AnimalName
    {
        get { return _animalName; }
        set
        {
            if(_animalName!= value)
            {
                _animalName= value;
                this.NotifyPropertyChanged("AnimalName");
            }
        }
    }

I could also write:

public string AnimalName {get;set;}

There is no difference in binding and validation. Everythings works as before when I exchange the code.

Is this due to the fact that I only create new animals but I do not allow to update the animals name in my application ?

So I need to call the propertyChanged("AnimalName"); only when I want to change its property value?

I am a c# beginner ;)

Answer 1

If your object has an updateable property (setter) that will be bound to a control then you need to ensure to let the bound control know of any changes to that property via INotifyPropertyChanged. However, if you have a readonly property and/or a property that's not going to be used in a data-binding scenario then you don't care about implementing or calling NotifyPropertyChanged method from within that property's setter in which case you can use automatic properties.