Constructor overloading in C Sharp (C#) - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Constructor overloading

📖 Scenario: You are creating a simple program to represent a Book in a library system. Sometimes you know all details about the book, and sometimes you only know the title.

🎯 Goal: Build a Book class with two constructors: one that takes only the title, and another that takes title, author, and year. Then create two Book objects using these constructors and print their details.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a class called Book with three fields: title, author, and year

Add a constructor that takes only string title and sets author to "Unknown" and year to 0

Add a constructor that takes string title, string author, and int year and sets all fields

Create two Book objects: one using the single-parameter constructor and one using the three-parameter constructor

Print the details of both books in the format: Title: {title}, Author: {author}, Year: {year}

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Constructor overloading helps create flexible classes that can be initialized with different sets of information, like creating user profiles with varying details.

💼 Career

Understanding constructor overloading is important for software developers to write clean, reusable, and flexible code in object-oriented programming.

1

Create the Book class with fields

Create a class called Book with three public fields: string title, string author, and int year.

C Sharp (C#)

public class Book
{
    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use public string title; to declare the fields inside the class.

2

Add two constructors to the Book class

Add two constructors inside the Book class: one that takes string title and sets author to "Unknown" and year to 0, and another that takes string title, string author, and int year and sets all fields.

C Sharp (C#)

public class Book
{
    public string title;
    public string author;
    public int year;

    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use this.title = title; inside each constructor to set the fields.

3

Create two Book objects using both constructors

In the Main method, create two Book objects: book1 using the constructor with only title "C# Basics", and book2 using the constructor with title "Advanced C#", author "John Doe", and year 2023.

C Sharp (C#)

public class Book
{
    public string title;
    public string author;
    public int year;

    public Book(string title)
    {
        this.title = title;
        this.author = "Unknown";
        this.year = 0;
    }

    public Book(string title, string author, int year)
    {
        this.title = title;
        this.author = author;
        this.year = year;
    }
}

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Create book1 and book2 here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use new Book("C# Basics") to create book1.

4

Print the details of both books

Add Console.WriteLine statements to print the details of book1 and book2 in the format: Title: {title}, Author: {author}, Year: {year}.

C Sharp (C#)

public class Book
{
    public string title;
    public string author;
    public int year;

    public Book(string title)
    {
        this.title = title;
        this.author = "Unknown";
        this.year = 0;
    }

    public Book(string title, string author, int year)
    {
        this.title = title;
        this.author = author;
        this.year = year;
    }
}

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        Book book1 = new Book("C# Basics");
        Book book2 = new Book("Advanced C#", "John Doe", 2023);

        // Print book details here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use Console.WriteLine($"Title: {book1.title}, Author: {book1.author}, Year: {book1.year}"); to print details.