Private struct in a DLL

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Ok, what I want to do is have a "telephone" struct in a DLL where the list of telephone is accessible not the struct its self. Basically I have some demographic data in the class and within there can be multiple numbers/types/statuses thus the list of telephone data. I keep getting Inconsistent accessibility unless I make it public which I don't want to do.
--- Addition ---
Please see below for further clarification. However short version, trying to figure out the best practice for accessing/updating the information in the DLL while maintaining a certain level of control over what is available to the calling application.

Posted 20-Mar-14 2:22am

MacRaider4

Updated 20-Mar-14 5:45am

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Richard MacCutchan 20-Mar-14 8:50am

OK, and what exactly are you asking for?

Maarten Kools 20-Mar-14 9:07am

You either expose the whole thing, or you don't. If you wish to keep the struct "telephone" private, you cannot expose a public list of it either, makes sense, doesn't it?

MacRaider4 20-Mar-14 9:11am

yeah, that's what I thought...

MacRaider4 20-Mar-14 9:14am

I was over thinking it, hate when that happens... thanks guys!

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 20-Mar-14 11:25am

First of all, you accepted the "answer" which cannot help you in principle. Please see my comments to Solution 1.
Idea with interface is fruitful, but the answer does not provide any solutions, besides, solutions can be different. Interface approach is totally irrelevant to you access problem.

Do you really think your problem is solved? :-)

If not, write some code sample which reproduces the problem. Make sure the sample is minimal. And read about access specifiers.

—SA

MacRaider4 20-Mar-14 11:42am

Without boring you too much, basically what I'm trying to do is write some "dlls" to do some testing for a in-house product update/replacement. There are many applications that access the same data and for lack of better terms functions so instead of having to maintain a lot of code this would help reduce it. Ok that's that...
Back to the "problem" and I've done it before but I haven't done enough consistent C# programming to remember how I did it (nor where :-) ). So Application-A is going to look at the DLL to process information about a person: firstName, lastName, Address... etc. All of those will have single values until we get to Telephone (which will contain a number, status, type, and a few other details) and there can be 1 or more of these. So I guess I'm asking more of a what would be the best practice for creating said list of telephone data. Obviously the calling application needs to know what data to insert into the list, but not to have access to an individual element of said list.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 20-Mar-14 12:02pm

How about NUnt? Ready to use unit testing product...
You need to understand a number of things about accessibility... and reflection. Not sure if you are ready...
—SA

Raul Iloc 21-Mar-14 3:10am

My solution, by using Interface, it remains the best solution for your question and context (you want to hide some info from your struct).
The "struct" is not indicated to be used when in your case (you said that there is a lot of information in your "struct") see MSDN link in my comment bellow.
PS: I saw that Sergey convinced you to UnDo the acceptance of my solution, but did you tried my solution it not works?

Philippe Mori 20-Mar-14 21:25pm

If a public function or property use a struct then that struct need to be visible to the outside world to be useful. If you don't want to present original struct then your list should contains something else (maybe a class with read-only properties).

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Raul Iloc · Answer 1 · 2014-03-20T03:09:00

Solution 1

1.First you should have a class named Telephone and not a struct and this class should implement an interface let named TelephoneInfo.
2.In the TelephoneInfo interface (that must be public) you have to add all properties and methods that you want to be accessible from the outside world.
3.Your list of Telephone should be changed to list of TelephoneInfo.

Posted 20-Mar-14 3:09am

Raul Iloc

Comments

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 20-Mar-14 11:23am

Sorry, I voted 1. Who told you that OP needs a class, not struct? It could be anything. Perhaps you think that interface can only be implemented by a class? Wrong. You totally failed to address access aspect. Naive OP accepted the answer, but it is totally wrong.
—SA

Raul Iloc 20-Mar-14 13:27pm

What is wrong with you gay!?
I gave a solution that I considered to be the best for this question. I know very well that also struct could be used to implement an interface, but is not indicated to be used strcut in this case, like also MSDN said: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229017(v=vs.110).aspx

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 20-Mar-14 13:42pm

Okay, I got it. You "consider"... Don't you think this is not enough? :-).
--SA

Raul Iloc 20-Mar-14 13:31pm

In the meantime, the initial question was changed/updated with other info, but my answer was for the original question!

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 20-Mar-14 13:43pm

I can understand that, such things happen. I would advice to correct your answer accordingly or add a note to it. It can be very helpful.
--SA

Raul Iloc 21-Mar-14 7:32am

My solution, by using Interface, remains the best solution for this question and its context. The "struct" is not indicated to be used when is a lot of information in it, see MSDN link in my comment above!

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 21-Mar-14 12:23pm

It could the best if you addressed the OP's problem; the question was about DLL. I estimated the answer as applicable to the question, not understanding your use of interfaces; this understanding could be perfectly good, but it does not yet make it a good answer. Besides, you still did not respond to the problem with struct vs. class: why not struct? Please explain.
—SA

Raul Iloc 21-Mar-14 13:22pm

I alredy asnwer to this question about using class and not struct see above the MSDN link. But shortly here are some texts from there:
√ CONSIDER defining a struct instead of a class if instances of the type are small and commonly short-lived or are commonly embedded in other objects.

X AVOID defining a struct unless the type has all of the following characteristics:

•It logically represents a single value, similar to primitive types (int, double, etc.).

•It has an instance size under 16 bytes.

•It is immutable.

•It will not have to be boxed frequently.

In all other cases, you should define your types as classes.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 21-Mar-14 13:51pm

Thank you. Now, let's see.

Excuse me, which link? By the way, part of the items you listed are wrong, or non-strict.
However, the problem is: it is not related to the question, and not to your generally useful idea to use interface (which is in turn unrelated to OP's problem). Struct can implement interfaces exactly as well as class.

—SA

Raul Iloc 22-Mar-14 4:52am

1.Regarding the struct: so you are not agree with Microsoft team, and consider you better then them...
2.Regarding the fact that struct can implement interfaces, I know this from the beta version of C# (from 2001 when I have started to using it), and this is not the point.
3.My solution is very related with the question, but maybe is not related with your ideea about the question.
4.Here is the link, but also in my first replay to your comment:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229017(v=vs.110).aspx

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 22-Mar-14 6:10am

How about without considering authorities? are you talking science or not?
Look, I can discuss with you something, only if you stop any personal insinuations, "better than", etc. Once and forever.
—SA

Raul Iloc 22-Mar-14 6:38am

Sorry about this, but you was the first that insinuated that I do not know that interfaces can be inhertited by a struct. Now I just have seen that you deleted your first comment to my solution where you did this.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 22-Mar-14 19:36pm

You don't see difference between that and criticism. Enough of that...
—SA