In object-oriented programming, when creating an object from a given class, it is necessary to call a special method of the class known as a constructor.
The constructor is a special method of a class, which does not have a return type, it has the same name as the name of its class.
new keyword.To declare the constructor in your class, use the following format.
<AccessModifiers> <ClassName>(<parametersList>)
{
}
There are various types of constructors.
If you don't provide a constructor for your class, C# creates one by default that instantiates the object and sets member variables to the default values.
Here is an example of the most simplified parameterless constructor in the CustomerInfo class.
public CustomerInfo()
{
}
The following code shows how to call a default parameterless constructor.
CustomerInfo customer = new CustomerInfo();
In the above example, using the new keyword, we call the constructor of the class CustomerInfo. The memory is allocated for the newly created object of the CustomerInfo type.
Similar to the methods, if we need extra data to create an object, the constructor gets it through a parameter list. The following example passes two strings variables name and address as a parameter to the constructor.
public CustomerInfo(string name, string address)
{
this.Name = name;
this.Address = address;
}
Similarly, the call of a constructor with parameters is done in the same way as the call of a method with parameters. The required values are supplied as a list separated with commas.
CustomerInfo customer = new CustomerInfo("John", "11 wall street");
There is no limit to parameters, you can have as many parameters as you want.
The constructor which creates an object by copying variables from another object is called a copy constructor. The purpose of a copy constructor is to initialize a new instance to the values of an existing instance.
public CustomerInfo(CustomerInfo customer)
{
this.Name = customer.Name;
this.Address = customer.Address;
}
The copy constructor is called by passing the object as a parameter of the same class.
CustomerInfo customer1 = new CustomerInfo("John", "11 wall street");
CustomerInfo customer2 = new CustomerInfo(customer1);
customer1.Print();
customer2.Print();
Let's execute the above code and you will see the same values for both objects.
Name: John, Address: 11 wall street
Name: John, Address: 11 wall street
A private constructor is declared by specifying the private access modifier. It is used to prevent creating instances of a class when we have only static members.
public class Counter
{
private Counter()
{ }
public static int currentCount;
public static int IncrementCount()
{
return ++currentCount;
}
}
You can call the members using the class name instead of creating its object.
Counter.currentCount = 9;
Counter.IncrementCount();
Console.WriteLine("New count: {0}", Counter.currentCount);
Let's execute the above code and you will see the following output.
New count: 10
A static constructor is used to initialize any static data, or to perform a particular action that needs to be performed only once. It does not take any access modifiers or any parameters.
public static int minimumAge;
static CustomerInfo()
{
minimumAge = 18;
}
To see how it works, we will print a message on the console in both default and static constructors.
static CustomerInfo()
{
minimumAge = 18;
Console.WriteLine("Static Constructor Called");
}
public CustomerInfo()
{
Console.WriteLine("Default Constructor Called");
}
Now let's call the default constructor and see the order in which the static and default constructors are called.
CustomerInfo customer = new CustomerInfo();
Console.WriteLine("Minimum Age: {0}", CustomerInfo.minimumAge);
Let's execute the above code and you will see the following output.
Static Constructor Called
Default Constructor Called
Minimum Age: 18
As you can see, we just called the default constructor, but the compiler calls the static constructor before the default constructor.
All the examples related to the constructors are available in the ConstructorsTests.cs file of the source code. Download the source code and try out all the examples for better understanding.