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How to: Declare a Property with Mixed Access Levels (Visual Basic)

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If you want the Get and Set procedures on a property to have different access levels, you can use the more permissive level in the Property statement and the more restrictive level in either the Get or Set statement. You use mixed access levels on a property when you want certain parts of the code to be able to get the property's value, and certain other parts of the code to be able to change the value.

For more information on access levels, see Access levels in Visual Basic.

To declare a property with mixed access levels

  1. Declare the property in the normal way, and specify the less restrictive access level (such as Public) in the Property statement.

  2. Declare either the Get or the Set procedure specifying the more restrictive access level (such as Friend).

  3. Do not specify an access level on the other property procedure. It assumes the access level declared in the Property statement. You can restrict access on only one of the property procedures.

    Public Class employee
    Private salaryValue As Double
    Protected Property salary() As Double
        Get
            Return salaryValue
        End Get
        Private Set(ByVal value As Double)
            salaryValue = value
        End Set
    End Property
End Class

    In the preceding example, the Get procedure has the same Protected access as the property itself, while the Set procedure has Private access. A class derived from employee can read the salary value, but only the employee class can set it.

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