In the past, for a class member, if we wanted to define it as a property member, we had to define a private member variable first. For example, for the Product class, we can define a property, ProductName as follows:

private string productName;
public string ProductName
{
get { return productName; }
set { productName = value; }
}

This may be useful if we need to add some logic inside the get/set methods. But if we don't need to, the above format gets tedious, especially if there are many members.

Now, with the new version of C#, the above property can be simplified into one statement:

public string ProductName { get; set; }

When Visual Studio compiles this statement, it will automatically create a private member variable productName, and use the old style's get/set methods to define the property. This could save on lots of typing.

Just as with the new type var, the automatic properties are only meaningful to the Visual Studio 2008 compiler. The compiled assembly is actually a valid .NET 2.0 assembly.

Interestingly, later on, if you find you need to add logic to the get/set methods, you can still convert this automatic property to the old style's property.

Now, let us create this class in the test project:

public class Product
{
public int ProductID { get; set; }
public string ProductName { get; set; }
public decimal UnitPrice { get; set; }
}

We can put this class inside the Program.cs file, within the namespace, TestNewFeaturesApp. We will use this class throughout this chapter.