How to make a class internal to a solution

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Hi All,

I have a solution with several projects in it.

I would like to use a class declared in one of the projects in another one and therefore reference it from the project in which i wish to use it.

Ideally this class would be "Internal" however this prevents me from using it in the second project however if i make it public it will be visible outside of the solution.

Is there a way of declaring a class that will only be visible to projects within a solution and not external customers when it is distributed. Is this possible?

Thanks in advance

George

Posted 18-Sep-12 22:27pm

gwithey

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3 solutions

Solution 1

No. Consider this:

public: Access is not restricted.

protected: Access is limited to the containing class or types derived from the containing class.

Internal: Access is limited to the current assembly.

protected internal: Access is limited to the current assembly or types derived from the containing class.

private: Access is limited to the containing type.

Cheers

Posted 18-Sep-12 22:36pm

Mario Majčica

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gwithey 19-Sep-12 4:46am

Ah i thought this may be the case, i have read the documentation and tried to think of a solution however thought maybe somebody had stumbled across a way of achieving this even if it is a little far fetched. So a group of dlls are not able to share the class among themselves but not the code using them when distributed.

Mario Majčica 19-Sep-12 4:50am

Unfortunately you are limited to the assembly. You may think of merging assemblies into one, but I'm not completely sure that it will work. Check this:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mbarnett/ILMerge.aspx

gwithey 19-Sep-12 5:00am

Ok thanks this could provide a possible solution, we already have a similar tool 'XenoCode' so could take this train of thought. I am just researching the issue at this stage before it is decided which route may be deemed the optimum direction for the project.

Mario Majčica 19-Sep-12 5:15am

Try it and let us know. Good luck!

Solution 2

As of now, it is not possible via using scope keywords in C#. You can only implement a logic that would throw an exception when accessed from another assembly other than yours.

On a side note, let me tell you that even a class with private constructor can be constructed using Reflection.

This is my opinion on it. Let's see what others can propose to you :)

Regards

Posted 18-Sep-12 22:43pm

CodeHawkz

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gwithey 19-Sep-12 4:51am

Ok this makes sense, i suppose if i require security the exception route may be a good idea or something similar at least as not sure if the user of the dll's may be able to bury the exception. Thanks for the advice

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Alan N · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-19T00:52:00

Solution 3

The Runtime.CompilerServices.InternalsVisibleToAttribute should do this.

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0tke9fxk.aspx[^] for details of use.

Alan.

Posted 19-Sep-12 0:52am

Alan N

Comments

gwithey 3-Oct-12 4:06am

This was exactly what i was looking for and worked perfectly, thanks Alan =)