Class Design Question

Monday, May 10, 2010 by Nate Bross

Someone asked on Stack Overflow:

This is a super newbie question, I’ve been programming for a while, but am just learning OOP. I have a class that works with user input via the C# console.
There are different methods in this class to gather different input sets.

I have another class that takes these input sets and puts them in a database.
What is the best way to pass the input from my input class to my database insert class?

My guess would be:

Array1[] = inputClass.GetParameterSet1();
DatabaseInsertClass.InsertIntoDatabase1(Array1[]);

Is there anything wrong with this or is there a better way to do this? Should I even have two classes (The database class could also take the user input)?

I posted the following answer, which was chosen as the accepted answer and received 2 upvotes:

You should have a “data” class, that represents all of your parameters.

Your GetParameters class should create an instance of this class.

Your InsertDatabase class should accept an instance of this class.

public class Data 
{
    public string value1 {get;set;}
    // add more properties here
}

public class GetInputParameters
{
    public Data GetParameters()
    {
        var d = new Data();
        d.value1 = Console.ReadLine();
        return d;
    }
}


public class InsertToDatabase
{
    public void InsertRecord(Data value)
    {
        // database persistance code
    }
}

Additionally, you could use a generic list to pass more than once instance of the data class, you could use an array, but a generic list is much easier to work with.

Originally posted on Stack Overflow — 2 upvotes (accepted answer). Licensed under CC BY-SA.