What is the C# equivalent of friend?

Ben_Leavett_22185 0
Viewed 245555

Possible Duplicate:
Why does C# not provide the C++ style ‘friend’ keyword?

I'd like the private member variables of a class to be accessible to a Tester class without exposing them to other classes.

In C++ I'd just declare the Tester class as a friend, how do I do this in C#? Can someone give me an example?

c#
5 Answers

There's no direct equivalent of "friend" - the closest that's available (and it isn't very close) is InternalsVisibleTo. I've only ever used this attribute for testing - where it's very handy!

Example: To be placed in AssemblyInfo.cs

[assembly: InternalsVisibleTo("OtherAssembly")]
user_226560

There isn't a 'friend' keyword in C# but one option for testing private methods is to use System.Reflection to get a handle to the method. This will allow you to invoke private methods.

Given a class with this definition:

public class Class1
{
    private int CallMe()
    {
        return 1;
    }
}

You can invoke it using this code:

Class1 c = new Class1();
Type class1Type = c.GetType();
MethodInfo callMeMethod = class1Type.GetMethod("CallMe", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic);

int result = (int)callMeMethod.Invoke(c, null);

Console.WriteLine(result);

If you are using Visual Studio Team System then you can get VS to automatically generate a proxy class with private accessors in it by right clicking the method and selecting "Create Unit Tests..."

RobG_282320
Related