Code inspection: Auto-property accessor is never used (non-private accessibility)

This inspection reports public auto-properties that have nominal usages, but may not do anything meaningful because one of their accessors is never used.

Here is an example that illustrates the issue in a simple case:

        
public class Post
{
    // Set in the constructor but never read
    public string Name { get; set; }

    // Read once but the value is never set
    public bool NeedsReview { get; set; }

    public Post(string name) => Name = name;

    public void FlagReview()
    {
        if(NeedsReview)
            Console.WriteLine("Please review");
    }
}

    

For the solution-wide inspection to work, you need to enable at least one of the following:

Simplified global usage checking: select Show unused non-private type members when solution-wide analysis is off on the Editor | Inspection Settings page of JetBrains Rider settings Ctrl+Alt+S.
Solution-wide analysis: select Enable solution-wide analysis on the Editor | Inspection Settings page of JetBrains Rider settings Ctrl+Alt+S.

Note that even if the reported accessor has no direct usages in your solution, there could be cases where it is used indirectly — for example, via reflection — or it could just be designed as public API. In all those cases, you would want to suppress the usage-checking inspection for the accessor in one of the following ways:

The recommended way is to decorate the implicitly used accessor with a code annotation attribute. There are two attributes for this purpose: [UsedImplicitly] and [PublicAPI], which are functionally similar, but let you and your teammates understand how the accessor is actually used.
You can also suppress usage-checking inspections with any custom attribute. To do so, mark the definition of that attribute with the [MeansImplicitUse] attribute.
And finally, you can suppress a specific usage-checking inspection as any other code inspection with a suppression comment or a suppression attribute.

Last modified: 28 May 2024