Passing parent object to child objects

[Chicagoan2016]

Hi,
I am looking at some old code and found we have used

  FieldManager.UpdateChildren(this);

We only need the primary key 'id' in child objects, so could we change the code to

FieldManager.UpdateChildren(id);

Kind regards

[rockfordlhotka]

This is a choice you make based on abstraction and dependency management.

Yes, you can pass in just the id, making the choice that the parent knows what the child needs. And if that changes in the future, then you change the calling code.

Or you pass in the parent reference, making the choice that the parent doesn't know what the child needs, and allowing the child to pull whatever data is necessary.

I don't know that either is "correct" - it is a choice.

[michaelcsikos]

Sometimes in our generic base classes we declare Insert / Update(object parent) (or ISomething parent) for the same reason: we don't know what the child needs, and also the child class may have multiple types of parents.