trying to expose a class member to be public and readonly or a public constant

Question

i am stuck with a simple variable assignment , the only condintion to make it littl complex for me is that i need the struct values to be private , so they wont be modified alswhwere

and to be able to use values of the struct but in a safe way, i am trying to use public readonly variables . so that's how i can share information with the application in read only mode , shouldn't it be simple ?

what am i missing ?

as the application starts in Page_Load i am calling SetTablesMetaDetails()

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if(!Page.IsPostBack)
    {
      .... some other App inits here
    }

    else
    {

    }    

    // this method should be the one that instanciates the DbTable struct
   //..thus sets the values of tables "Name" and "ID"
   currProjData.setTablesReferences(); 
}

• The struct , will be used to assign values :

            public class DBMetaDetails
            {
                public struct DbTable
                {
                    public DbTable(string tableName, int tableId): this()
                    {
                        this.TableName = tableName;
                        this.TableID = tableId;
                    }

                    public string TableName { get;  set; }
                    public int TableID { get;  set; }
                }
            }

• The current project class to hold values

public static class currProjData 
{
    static DBMetaDetails.DbTable CustomersMeta = new DBMetaDetails.DbTable();
    static DBMetaDetails.DbTable TimesMeta = new DBMetaDetails.DbTable();

    public static void SetTablesMetaDetails()
    {

        TimesMeta.TableID = HTtIDs.TblTimes;
        TimesMeta.TableName = HTDB_Tables.TblTimes;

        CustomersMeta.TableID = HTtIDs.TblCustomers;
        CustomersMeta.TableName = HTDB_Tables.TblTimeCPAReport;

    }

    public static readonly int CustomersTid = CustomersMeta.TableID;
    public static readonly string CustomersTblName = CustomersMeta.TableName;

    public static readonly int TimesTid = TimesMeta.TableID;
    public static readonly string TimesTblName = TimesMeta.TableName;
}

My Problem is that i need those two sets of tables ( Tid & TblName ) details to be exposed to rest of application but as application starts it calls the SetTablesMetaDetails()

and the four last lines does not execute , i've tried moving this section into SetTablesMetaDetails() but it's not the correct syntax , i am geting errors ,

What is the correct way to acomplish assignment of CustomersTid ? _{(offcorse rest of the 3 as well)}

public static readonly int CustomersTid = CustomersMeta.TableID;

this is what i am missing cause i don't know how to get it initialized in same way the struct above does ... preferebly in one method call

Answer 1

If you want to modify them locally, but read them globally, add a modifier to the setter:

public string TableName { get;  private set; }
public int TableID { get;  private set; }

Could also be internal or protected if you want to.

Answer 2

Use Properties

public static int CustomersTid { get { return CustomersMeta.TableID; } }
public static string CustomersTblName { get { return CustomersMeta.TableName; } }

public static int TimesTid  { get { return TimesMeta.TableID; } }
public static string TimesTblName  { get { return TimesMeta.TableName; } }