Property Get Methods

Overview of Property Access Methods

For an overview of property access methods, see Property Access Methods.

Property Get Method Syntax

MATLAB^® calls a property's get method whenever the property value is queried.

Note

You cannot call property access methods directly. MATLAB calls these methods when you access property values.

Property get methods have the following syntax, where PropertyName is the name of the property. The function must return the property value.

methods 
   function value = get.PropertyName(obj)
      ...
end

Calculate Value for Dependent Property

The SquareArea class defines a dependent property Area. MATLAB does not store a value for the dependent Area property. When you query the value of the Area property, MATLAB calls the get.Area method calculates the value based on the Width and Height properties.

classdef SquareArea
   properties
      Width
      Height
   end
   properties (Dependent)
      Area
   end
   methods
      function a = get.Area(obj)
         a = obj.Width * obj.Height;
      end
   end
end

Errors Not Returned from Get Method

The MATLAB default object display suppresses error messages returned from property get methods. MATLAB does not allow an error issued by a property get method to prevent the display of the entire object.

Use the property set method to validate the property value. Validating the value when setting a property ensures that the object is in a valid state. Use the property get method only to return the value that the set method has validated.

Get Method Behavior

MATLAB does NOT call property get methods in the following cases:

Getting a property value from within its own property get method, which prevents recursive calling of the get method
Copying a value object (that is, not derived from the handle class). The set or get method is not called when copying property values from one object to another.

Documentation