The Static keyword in C# with Example

Static is a keyword or a modifier which is use to make a class, methods or variable properties as not instantiable, that means we cannot instantiate the items which we declared with a static modifier.

 

The static members which we declared can be accessed directly with a type name. Suppose if we apply a static modifier to a class property or to a method or variable, then we can access those static members directly with a class name, instead of creating an object of a class to access those properties.

 

Static Variables Declaration

The following is the example of defining a class with static properties and those can be accessed directly with the type instead of a specific object name.

 

     class User

    {

        public static string name;

        public static string location;

        public static int age;

    }

From the above example, we defined variables with static keyword, we can then access those variables directly with a type name like User.name, User.location and User.age.

 

Below is the examples of how to access the variables directly with a type name in C#.

 

     Console.WriteLine(User.name);

            Console.WriteLine(User.location);

            Console.WriteLine(User.age);

 

The above statements, shows that we can access our static properties directly by using class name instead of with class instance using class and dot notation.

 

Generally, instance of a class will contain a separate copy of all instance fields so the memory consumption will increase automatically, but if we use static modifier there is only one copy of each field so automatically the memory will be managed efficiently.

 

We can use static modifier with classes, methods, properties, constructors, operators, fields and with events but it cannot be used with indexers, finalizers or types other than classes.

 

Static Keyword Example in C#

 

The following is the example for creating a class by including both static and non-static variables & methods. Here we can access non-static variables and methods by creating an instance of the class, but it is not possible for us to access the static fields with an instance of the class so the static variables and methods can be accessed directly with the class name.

 

using System;

namespace CsharpnaijaTutorial

{

    class User

    {

        // Static Variables

        public static string name, location;

        //Non Static Variable

        public int age;

        // Non Static Method

        public void Details()

        {

            Console.WriteLine("Non Static Method");

        }

        // Static Method

        public static void Details1()

        {

            Console.WriteLine("Static Method");

        }

    }

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            User user = new User();

            user.age = 32;

            user.Details();

            User.name = "Musa Gadabs";

            User.location = "Abuja";

 Console.WriteLine($"Name: {User.name}, Location: {User.location}, Age: {user.age}");

            User.Details1();

            Console.WriteLine("\nPress Enter Key to Exit..");

            Console.ReadLine();

        }

    }

 

}

 

From the above example, we created a class called “User” with static and non-static variables & methods. We are accessing non-static variables and methods with an instance of User class and static fields and methods are accessed directly with the class name (User).

 

Thank you

 

References

1.     Tutlane

2.     Guru99