Keyword readonly and static in C#

Access restriction of a variable in a class is a broad topic in C#; we define the restriction by adding the keyword in front of our variables.

In some cases, we may have some member or variables in our class, and we don’t want other objects or classes amend their value. In this case, keyword readonly and static are very handy.

Between keyword readonly and static, static is more strict compared with readonly.

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Case Study

We define a Book class and the Book class has a name property and category property. We will pay more attention on the category member in this case.

Keyword – Read-Only

We add a keyword readonly in front of category.

public string Name 
{
get;
set;
}

readonly string category = "Science";

public Book(string name)
{
Name = name;
category = "";
}

The code above is perfectly legal, we assign variable category as Science in the beginning. We can assign another value when we run the class initialiser. However, if we try to amend the value of category outside of the initialiser, complier will issue an error; because it has a keyword readonly.

For example, the following code is illegal; because we try to amend the category outside of the initialiser.

public string Name 
{
get;
set;
}

readonly string category = "Science";

public Book(string name)
{
Name = name;
category = "";
}

public void AddRate(char letter) 
{
category = ""; //It is illegal, as we try to amend readonly vairble outside of the initialiser.
}

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Keyword – static

Compared with keyword readonly, keyword static is more strict.

The following code is illegal, as category is not a variable anymore; because we add a keyword static in front of category property.

public string Name 
{
get;
set;
}

static string category = "Science";

public Book(string name)
{
Name = name;
category = ""; //It is illegal, as constant category is no longer a variable anymore
}

In another word, if we declare a member as constant, we can’t change it anymore. If we need to access the member outside our class, we need to access by type name, instead of object name.

For example, we need to access the value of category outside of the class. The following code is perfectly legal.

Book.category; //Legal

Whereas, the following code is illegal.

book.category; //Illegal

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