C# Access Modifiers Examples

In this tutorial you will learn what is access modifier in C#, What are the different type of access modifiers in c# programming! how to use them!

Primarily there are four types of access modifiers in C#, like public, private, protected and internal.

  • private access modifier

    indicate the accessibility is limited only inside the classes / structure

  • public access modifier

    indicates, it can be accessed from anywhere that means there is no restriction on accessibility

  • protected access modifier

    Indicates the accessibility is limited within the class and any class :Inherited from this class

  • internal access modifier

    Internal access modifiers indicate that Access is limited exclusively to classes defined within the current project assembly

  • protected internal

    Access is limited to the current assembly and types derived

Access Modifiers in C#

Now let's experiment how above access modifiers in C# works
We have created following class with five different properties with different modifiers, will test them one by one

class ModifierKeywordSample           
{
    public string WTRPublic { get; set; }
    private string WTRPrivate { get; set; }
    protected string WTRProtected { get; set; }
    internal string WTRInternal { get; set; }
    protected internal string WTRProtectedInternal { get; set; }
}

private public protected access modifier c#

private access modifier in c#

Test 1: Here is the test result of private access modifier ,
If you notice, we can’t see the private member in image below

private access modifier

C# protected access modifier

Test 2: test result of protected access modifier , we can’t see the private protected in image below
Note: in earlier example protected member was appearing, because "ModifierKeywordSample" class was inherited

protected access modifier

C# internal access modifier

Test 3: test result of internal access modifier , we can’t see the internal protected in image below

Now to test “Internal” we have created a new application and then added the reference of earlier application, then inherited from “ModifierKeywordSample” which is in other assembly

internal access modifier

C# protected internal access modifier

Test 4: test result of protected internal modifier, Now instead of inheriting from "ModifierKeywordSample" class, if we create a new instance of same "ModifierKeywordSample" , we can't see protected internal member anymore.

protected internal access modifier

c# read only access modifier

Now you can create readonly member in C# class, note: this features is not available in C# 7.1, you must upgrade your C# version 8 or above, however, you can have readonly variable in C# 7.1

public  class MyClass
{
    public readonly string Message = "Default Message";
    public readonly string Caption { get; set; } = "My Caption";
      
}
c# override access modifier

If you want to create overridable member, then you must declare the member with virtual keyword

public  class MyClass
{  
    public virtual int MaxNumber { get; set; }     
}

Remember, abstract member of any abstract class is also overridable.

Hope you are enjoying C# Programming

To understand access modifier in c# programming you should read following tutorials

 
Access modifiers
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