DotNetNuke: The Power of Partial Classes

The Power of Partial Classes

Problem: You want a shared component but there can be many different versions of it. You don’t know what version to expect. You could always replace the latest version of the shared component but then you’re constantly distributing this ever growing component. Worse, if you a person has old versions of your software installed, the new version of the shared component may break something. You could end up with a huge shared component on a website (eating up memory) when the website only needs a few of the methods.
Solution: Using partial classes your shared component is a single class in the App_Code directory. You only add the methods that the software currently being installed needs. If you feel you need to, you can have a code file for each method.
What this gives you: You only have to worry about breaking older software if you replace the particular code file. The website only needs to load the components it is actually using.

You can start the class, add more files, remove some of the files and the files that were added are still there
This allows us to make changes to the IWEB Core even though unknown people have been making their won additions to the class. The only thing they cannot change is the actual code file. If they have a method that conflicts they will know immediate because it won’t compile
You can allow for code files in multiple languages because one partial class can inherit from another partial class in a different language. All methods from both classes will be visible in the final superclass.