C# - Static nested classes

Question

I have two classes which I want to access from any part of Windows Forms application. How to add a couple of Participants and how to referce them? The idea is this:

//add participants
Dialog.Participants.Add(new Participant { state = "" });
//modify state
Dialog.Participants[0].state = ...


public class Dialog
{
    public static string state { get; set; }
    public static List<Participant> Participants { get; set; }
}

public class Participant
{
    public static string state { get; set; }
    public static List<string> actions { get; set; }
}

maybe there is some better way to do it?

Answer 1

You are probably misusing the static keyword. Static use is to have all instances of one class share the same values. Here the state of a participant would be the same for every participant.

Try just removing the static keyword from your participants and you are probably done.

Answer 2

I would suggest the Singleton-pattern for this which enables you to have only one single instance of a class per app-domain . This way you don´t need any static at all, just get the single instance and call any of its members:

public class Dialog
{
    private readonly static _instance = new Dialog();
    public static Instance { get { return _instance; }}

    public List<Participant> Participants { get; set; }
}

Now you can just use this code fom anywhere in your program:

Dialog.Instance.Participants[.}.state ? ...

Answer 3

Just remove the static modifier from Participant class properties. Being static will make them unrelated to the defiend instances and cannot be called like this:

Dialog.Participants[0].state = ...