Is there an official C# guideline for the order of items in terms of class structure?
Does it go:
- Public Fields
- Private Fields
- Properties
- Constructors
- Methods
?
I’m curious if there is a hard and fast rule about the order of items? I’m kind of all over the place. I want to stick with a particular standard so I can do it everywhere.
The real problem is my more complex properties end up looking a lot like methods and they feel out of place at the top before the constructor.
Any tips/suggestions?
16 s
According to the StyleCop Rules Documentation the ordering is as follows.
Within a class, struct or interface: (SA1201 and SA1203)
- Constant Fields
- Fields
- Constructors
- Finalizers (Destructors)
- Delegates
- Events
- Enums
- Interfaces (interface implementations)
- Properties
- Indexers
- Methods
- Structs
- Classes
Within each of these groups order by access: (SA1202)
- public
- internal
- protected internal
- protected
- private
Within each of the access groups, order by static, then non-static: (SA1204)
- static
- non-static
Within each of the static/non-static groups of fields, order by readonly, then non-readonly : (SA1214 and SA1215)
- readonly
- non-readonly
An unrolled list is 130 lines long, so I won’t unroll it here. The methods part unrolled is:
- public static methods
- public methods
- internal static methods
- internal methods
- protected internal static methods
- protected internal methods
- protected static methods
- protected methods
- private static methods
- private methods
The documentation notes that if the prescribed order isn’t suitable – say, multiple interfaces are being implemented, and the interface methods and properties should be grouped together – then use a partial class to group the related methods and properties together.