In Visual Basic .NET, you can use get and set methods in your class to control access to class properties, and ensure that the values assigned to them meet certain requirements.
The get method is used to retrieve the value of a property, while the set method is used to assign a value to a property.
Here's an example of how to use get/set in a class:
Public Class Person
Private _name As String
Public Property Name() As String
Get
Return _name
End Get
Set(ByVal value As String)
If Not String.IsNullOrEmpty(value) Then
_name = value
End If
End Set
End Property
End Class
In this example, we have a class called "Person" with a private variable called "_name". We use a property called "Name" to control access to this variable.
The get method simply returns the value of "_name". The set method, on the other hand, ensures that the value being assigned to the property is not null or empty before assigning it to "_name".
We can then use this class as follows:
Dim person as New Person()
person.Name = "John Doe" ' This is valid
person.Name = "" ' This is invalid and will be ignored
By using get/set in our class, we have added an extra level of data validation and ensured that our class is more robust.