Collection classes can be a convenient method to handling sets of data. In many cases, collections handle strong types better than other classes within the .NET framework. There are several different ways to implement a collection class. This blog entry demonstrates how easy it is to implement a collection class by inheriting the CollectionBase class.
This demonstration creates a collection of line items for an amortization schedule.
The input of the amortization schedule is the following:
- Starting Balance
- Periodic Payment Amount
- Periodic Interest Rate
The output will be the following in a set of data:
- The Current Period Count
- The Period's Starting Balance
- The Period's Interest Amount Paid
- The Period's Principal Amount Paid
- The Period's Ending Balance
The following is output of the program further illustrating what a amortization schedule does.
In C#, inheritance is simple. Here is the class declaration used to create the collection class:
class Amortization : CollectionBase
Although not implemented in this case, there methods that can be overridden to handle the indexing of the collection of amortization periods. I have chosen to hide these methods as this collection is read-only and its data is generated by the program only.
