Hi Larry,

Having Properties for all those parameters which go to and fro is possibly
the best solution.
Moreover, it is not tedious enough to handle them as properties and at the
same time
comes in very handy for most of your functionalities

Kuldeep

Hi Larry,

It depents on how you store the value there and format of file. Anyway, setting
the params by properties is clear solution. If object is flexible you can
combine these too methods - props to accept neccessary params and method
for aditional params, but it depends on format.

Regards, Alex
[TechBlog] http://devkids.blogspot.com

LB> I'm writing a class to create a specifically formatted fixed width
LB> file.  It's 800 characters wide, consisting of approx 30 fields.
LB>
LB> So I need to pass 30 variables, maybe 10 are required.  Should I
LB> write the function to accept these as parameters in a method, or
LB> should I make them properties?    Can I make certain properties
LB> required?
LB>

There is a third solution.

Write a wrapper object, containing all the parameters.

public class EmployeeController

   public static void UpdateEmployee ( EmployeeArgs arg )
{

}

public class (or struct) EmployeeArgs
{
   public Guid EmployeeUUID (property here)
   public string LastName
   public string FirstName
   public DateTime CreateDate
   public DateTIme HireDate

}

EmployeeArgs myArg = new EmployeeArgs ( ) ;
myArg.EmployeeUUID = Guid.NewGuid();
myArg.LastName = "Smith";
myArg.FirstName = "John";
myArg.CreateDate = DateTime.Now;

EmployeeController.UpdateEmployee ( myArg);

With 30 (and some optional) parameters, I'd write the wrapper arg object.

You'll notice I didnt' specify the HireDate, aka, it is optional.  Your
controller class can determine what to do in an omitted HireDate.

ALSO.

If you have some MANDATORY properties, then you can expose the constructor
to the wrapper arg.

public class  EmployeeArgs
{
   //no default constructor
   public EmployeeArg ( string lname, string fname)
{
       this.LastName = lname;
       this.FirstName = fname;
}

   public Guid EmployeeUUID (property here)
   public string LastName
   public string FirstName
   public DateTime CreateDate
   public DateTIme HireDate

}

This way, you're forcing lname and fname.