Member '' cannot be accessed with

Question

I am getting into C# and I am having this issue:

namespace MyDataLayer
{
    namespace Section1
    {
        public class MyClass
        {
            public class MyItem
            {
                public static string Property1{ get; set; }
            }
            public static MyItem GetItem()
            {
                MyItem theItem = new MyItem();
                theItem.Property1 = "MyValue";
                return theItem;
            }
        }
     }
 }

I have this code on a UserControl:

using MyDataLayer.Section1;

public class MyClass
{
    protected void MyMethod
    {
        MyClass.MyItem oItem = new MyClass.MyItem();
        oItem = MyClass.GetItem();
        someLiteral.Text = oItem.Property1;
    }
}

Everything works fine, except when I go to access Property1. The intellisense only gives me "Equals, GetHashCode, GetType, and ToString" as options. When I mouse over the oItem.Property1, Visual Studio gives me this explanation:

MemberMyDataLayer.Section1.MyClass.MyItem.Property1.getcannot be accessed with an instance reference, qualify it with a type name instead

I am unsure of what this means, I did some googling but wasn't able to figure it out.

Answer 1

No need to use static in this case as thoroughly explained. You might as well initialise your property without GetItem() method, example of both below:

namespace MyNamespace
{
    using System;

    public class MyType
    {
        public string MyProperty { get; set; } = new string();
        public static string MyStatic { get; set; } = "I'm static";
    }
}

Consuming:

using MyType;

public class Somewhere 
{
    public void Consuming(){

        // through instance of your type
        var myObject = new MyType(); 
        var alpha = myObject.MyProperty;

        // through your type 
        var beta = MyType.MyStatic;
    }
}       

Answer 2

I know this is an old thread, but I just spent 3 hours trying to figure out what my issue was. I ordinarily know what this error means, but you can run into this in a more subtle way as well. My issue was my client class (the one calling a static method from an instance class) had a property of a different type but named the same as the static method. The error reported by the compiler was the same as reported here, but the issue was basically name collision.

For anyone else getting this error and none of the above helps, try fully qualifying your instance class with the namespace name. ..() so the compiler can see the exact name you mean.