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This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Allow Value Type to Be Null
| Scenario/Problem: |
You need to assign null to a value type to indicate the lack of a value. This scenario often occurs when working with databases, which allow any data type to be null. |
| Solution: |
This isn’t technically something you need to implement in your class. .NET 2.0 introduced the Nullable<T> type, which wraps any value type into something that can be null. It’s useful enough that there is a special C# syntax shortcut to do this. The following two lines of code are semantically equivalent: Nullable<int> _id; int? _id; |
Let’s make the _id field in our Vertex3d class Nullable<T> to indicate the lack of a valid value. The following code snippet demonstrates how it works:
struct Vertex3d : IFormattable, IEquatable<Vertex3d>,
IComparable<Vertex3d>
{
private int? _id;
public int? Id
{
get
{
return _id;
}
set
{
_id = value;
}
}
...
}
...
Vertex3d vn = new Vertex3d(1, 2, 3);
vn.Id = 3; //ok
vn.Id = null; //ok
try
{
Console.WriteLine("ID: {0}", vn.Id.Value);//throws
}
catch (InvalidOperationException)
{
Console.WriteLine("Oops--you can't get a null value!");
}
if (vn.Id.HasValue)
{
Console.WriteLine("ID: {0}", vn.Id.Value);
}
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