Using a Static Modifier C#

 Just a short tip when using static modifier in your code.  I made the image extra large this time, so you guys can see clearly.  I want to make sure everyone got to know static modifiers a little better.  Just remember if you create a static modifier in your code you can only access it from the class and not the instance.  In the beginning I was frustrated and I wondered why I couldn't access it like from the instance or object and it was because it's weird.  You can see the example below I created a static modifier and created a unit test in Visual Studio to test the property.  As you can see you can only access the InstanceCount object by using the Customer class.  I created 3 new customers with their first names as an example and used Customer.InstanceCount to increment by 1.  

Hope you find this useful.

Static modifier- declares a member to the class itself

Public static int InstanceCount {get; set;}

·         Accessed using the class name

·         Not an object variable

Customer InstanceCount += 1;

namespace LMS.BL

{

    public class Customer

    {   //the static modifier belongs to the class itself

        //rather than the instance

        public static int InstanceCount { get; set; }

Lets see an Example:

[TestMethod]

        public void StaticTest()

        {

            //Arrange

            var c1 = new Customer();

            c1.FirstName = "Jan";

            Customer.InstanceCount += 1;

            var c2 = new Customer();

            c2.FirstName = "Bob";

            Customer.InstanceCount += 1;

            var c3 = new Customer();

            c3.FirstName = "Dave";

            Customer.InstanceCount += 1;

            //Act

            //Assert

            Assert.AreEqual(3, Customer.InstanceCount);