Visual Studio Hacks

Refactor Your Code #14

Chapter 2, Master the Editor

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65

HACK

In addition to being a great time-saver, Rename removes any excuse you

might make about why a class is not named appropriately.

Encapsulate Field

The Encapsulate Field function creates a public property that encapsulates

your field. In the ongoing example, suppose that you need to create a public

property for the

_isStarted field. To do this, right-click on the field name

and click the Encapsulate Field function on the Refactor menu. You are then

shown the Encapsulate Field dialog, which is shown in Figure 2-35.

Visual Studio automatically sets the property name to be

IsStarted and

gives you the option to update references to the old field. Leave this setting

as External so that code in your class is not changed to reference the public

property and instead continues to use the private field. The other check-

boxes are similar to the ones you saw in the Rename dialog and perform the

same actions. After you click OK, you are shown a Preview Changes dia-

log—the same kind of dialog shown in Figure 2-34—which shows all of the

changes that will result. After you accept the changes shown, the following

code is added to the class:

public bool IsStarted

{

get

{

Figure 2-35. Encapsulate Field dialog