C# 9 Init-only Properties

The init feature is designed to be compatible with existing get only properties. Specifically, it is meant to be a completely additive change for a property that gets only today but desires more flexible object creation semantics.

• The init only properties can be set at the point of object creation but become effectively get only once object creation has completed.
• It allows for a much more flexible immutable model in C#.
• An init only property is declared by using the init accessor in place of the set accessor.

The following code shows the declaration of init only properties.

class Customer
{
    public string FirstName { get; init; }
    public string LastName { get; init; }
}

Why we need Init-only Properties

To know the benefits of the init only properties, we need to understand the problem it is actually trying to solve.

In some classes, we need to make properties publicly readable which you can declare as shown below.

class Customer
{
    public string FirstName { get; private set; }
    public string LastName { get; private set; }
}

Now you can only set the FirstName and LastName properties inside the class, such as constructor.

class Customer
{
    public string FirstName { get; private set; }
    public string LastName { get; private set; }

    public Customer(string first, string last)
    {
        FirstName = first;
        LastName = last;
    }
}

The main issue is that you can not use an object initializer instead of a constructor.

Customer customer = new Customer
{ 
    FirstName = "Mark",
    LastName = "Upston"
};

You will get the following errors.

Error CS0272: The property or indexer 'Customer.FirstName' cannot be used in this context because the set accessor is inaccessible
Error CS0272: The property or indexer 'Customer.LastName' cannot be used in this context because the set accessor is inaccessible

Another problem is that in some cases, you want a property to be set inside a constructor or object initialization and then not be changed once it is created, such as an immutable property.

Using the private set; you can not achieve complete immutability by only setting that property within a constructor or method. For example, a method can be called to change the property.

public void SetFirstName(string firstName)
{
    this.FirstName = firstName;
}
public void SetLastName(string lastName)
{
    this.LastName = lastName;
}

There come the init-only properties which solve this issue. Let's change the Customer class by changing the private set to init as shown below.

public record Person
{
    public string LastName { get; init; }
    public string FirstName { get; init; }
}

Now you can use the object initializer without any issue.

Customer customer = new Customer
{ 
    FirstName = "Mark",
    LastName = "Upston"
};

You will not able to change the property values after creation.