Partial Classes - are they bad design?
- by dferraro
Hello,
I'm wondering why the 'partial class' concept even exists in .NET. I'm working on an application and we are reading a (actually very good) book relavant to the development platform we are implementing at work. In the book he provides a large code base /wrapper around the platform API and explains how he developed it as he teaches different topics about the platform development.
Anyway, long story short - he uses partial classes, all over the place, as a way to fake multiple inheritence in C# (IMO). Why he didnt just split the classes up into multiple ones and use composition is beyond me. He will have 3 'partial class' files to make up his base class, each w/ 3-500 lines of code... And does this several times in his API.
Do you find this justifiable? If it were me, I'd have followed the S.R.P. and created multiple classes to handle different required behaviors, then create a base class that has instances of these classes as members (e.g. composition). Why did MS even put partial class into the framework?? They removed the ability to expand/collapse all code at each scope level in C# (this was allowed in C++) because it was obviously just allowing bad habits - partial class is IMO the same thing. I guess my quetion is: Can you explain to me when there would be a legitimate reason to ever use a partial class? I do not mean this to be a rant / war thread. I'm honeslty looking to learn something here.
Thanks
