C# – A field initializer cannot reference the nonstatic field, method, or property

c

I have a class and when I try to use it in another class I receive the error below. 

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;

namespace MySite
{
    public class Reminders
    {
        public Dictionary<TimeSpan, string> TimeSpanText { get; set; }

        // We are setting the default values using the Costructor
        public Reminders()
        {
            TimeSpanText.Add(TimeSpan.Zero, "None");
            TimeSpanText.Add(new TimeSpan(0, 0, 5, 0), "5 minutes before");
            TimeSpanText.Add(new TimeSpan(0, 0, 15, 0), "15 minutes before");
            TimeSpanText.Add(new TimeSpan(0, 0, 30, 0), "30 minutes before");
            TimeSpanText.Add(new TimeSpan(0, 1, 0, 0), "1 hour before");
            TimeSpanText.Add(new TimeSpan(0, 2, 0, 0), "2 hours before");
            TimeSpanText.Add(new TimeSpan(1, 0, 0, 0), "1 day before");
            TimeSpanText.Add(new TimeSpan(2, 0, 0, 0), "2 day before");
        }

    }
}

Using the class in another class 

class SomeOtherClass
{  
    private Reminders reminder = new Reminders();
    // error happens on this line:
    private dynamic defaultReminder = reminder.TimeSpanText[TimeSpan.FromMinutes(15)]; 
    ....

Error (CS0236):

A field initializer cannot reference the nonstatic field, method, or property

Why does it happen and how to fix it?

Best Answer

This line:

private dynamic defaultReminder = 
                          reminder.TimeSpanText[TimeSpan.FromMinutes(15)];

You cannot use an instance variable to initialize another instance variable. Why? Because the compiler can rearrange these - there is no guarantee that reminder will be initialized before defaultReminder, so the above line might throw a NullReferenceException.

Instead, just use:

private dynamic defaultReminder = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(15);

Alternatively, set up the value in the constructor:

private dynamic defaultReminder;

public Reminders()
{
    defaultReminder = reminder.TimeSpanText[TimeSpan.FromMinutes(15)]; 
}

There are more details about this compiler error on MSDN - Compiler Error CS0236.

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