VB & VBA in a Nutshell: The Language

4.1. Properties

An important element of any class is its properties. These are the equivalent of global or public variables in code modules. However, a property has the added advantages that you can both validate a value and execute other code every time a value is assigned to the property. In addition, properties declared within class modules can be accessed from outside the current project. Properties help eliminate the clutter of global variables that plagued almost every large-scale VB3 application I've seen, and that made both the development and maintenance of VB3 applications a nightmare.

4.1.1. Implementing Properties

Properties allow users and other programmers (including yourself) to safely access data. In many ways, properties are simply variables that hold a particular value or object. But with careful planning and a professional approach, you can turn these simple variables into powerful tools.

Take, for example, a class that is acting as a wrapper for a collection object. You may have a read-only property within your class called Count that returns the number of records held within the collection. Your Count property would simply pass on the Count property of the collection object. However, you could write code within your class's Count property procedure that checks if the value of the collection object's Count property is zero and, if it's zero, calls a procedure that populates the collection. In this way, the user of your class could populate the collection automatically ...