in c#, is it possible to access the common protected fields of one child in another child class?

See the question in code:

class commonParent {
     protected string name;
}

class child1:commonParent{
    // do some stuff
}

class child2:commonParent{
   // do some stuff

   protected void test(){
       child1 myChild1 = new child1();

       //is it possible to access myChild1.name in child2 without 
       //declaring the name public or internal?

      // I want to do something like this:
      string oldName = myChild1.name;

      //but I got the error:
      //Error   46  Cannot access protected member 'commonParent.name' 
      //via a qualifier of type 'child1'; the qualifier must be of 
      //type 'child2' (or derived from it)  
   }
}

The field "name" is only used by all children of commonParent class. I want 开发者_StackOverflowto hide this field from outside (classes not derived from commonParent) while leaving it accessible within the scope of commonParent and its children.

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Read following blog post by Eric Lippert,

• Why Can't I Access A Protected Member From A Derived Class?

try to use protected internal it will work

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you have to declare it at least protected

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I think this is bad design ,you should declare Name as Private and create a property with Get,Set accessors ,where you can chose if Get or Set could be Public ,Private or Protected ,otherwise Protected will allow any classes of the Same namespace to access a Field or Property .

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To answer your question, you can access them using reflection. This is not something you want to rely on, though.

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My approach to this is to provide a protected static method that does have access to the protected value, but is only available to the derived classes, like in the code below:

class commonParent
{
    protected string name;

    protected static string GetName(commonParent other)
    {
        return other.name;
    }
}

class child1 : commonParent
{
    // do some stuff
}

class child2 : commonParent
{
    protected void test()
    {
        child1 myChild1 = new child1();
        string oldName = commonParent.GetName(myChild1);

    }
}

This has the benefit of providing access to protected data only to derived classes.