Dynamically access class and its property in C#

Question

I need to access something like strClassname.strPropertyName I will have different values for strClassname and strProperty name in program execution.

Please direct me in right way.

Answer 1

Sounds to me like you are trying to get (or set) the value of a property on an object at runtime. So here's the most basic way to do this:

public static object GetPropertyValue(object instance, string strPropertyName)
{
    Type type = instance.GetType();
    System.Reflection.PropertyInfo propertyInfo = type.GetProperty(strPropertyName);
    return propertyInfo.GetValue(instance, null);
}

... and to set a value:

public static void SetPropertyValue(object instance, string strPropertyName, object newValue)
{
    Type type = instance.GetType();
    System.Reflection.PropertyInfo propertyInfo = type.GetProperty(strPropertyName);
    propertyInfo.SetValue(instance, newValue, null);
}

If you're attempting to get the names of properties of a class, here's a function for that:

public static IEnumerable<string> GetPropertyNames(string className)
{
    Type type = Type.GetType(className);
    return type.GetProperties().Select(p => p.Name);
}

Say that you have 100 objects, and you want to get the value of the Name property on each of them, here's a function that will do that:

public static IEnumerable<String> GetNames(IEnumerable<Object> objects, string nameProperty = "Name")
{
    foreach (var instance in objects)
    {
        var type = instance.GetType();
        var property = type.GetProperty(nameProperty);
        yield return property.GetValue(instance, null) as string;
    }
}

Answer 2

You can use reflection:

To get names of properties for a specific type use method Type.GetProper­ties. Method returns array of PropertyInfo objects and the property names are available through PropertyInfo.Name property. If you want to get only subset of all properties (e.g. only public static ones) use BindingFlags when calling GetProperties method. You have to specify at least two flags, one from Public/NonPublic and one of Instance/Static flags. If you use GetProperties without a BindingFlags parameter, default flags are Public + NonPublic + Instance.

Following example shows how to get public static properties.

using System.Reflection;  // reflection namespace

// get all public static properties of MyClass type
PropertyInfo[] propertyInfos;
propertyInfos = typeof(MyClass).GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public |
                                              BindingFlags.Static);
// sort properties by name
Array.Sort(propertyInfos,
        delegate(PropertyInfo propertyInfo1, PropertyInfo propertyInfo2)
        { return propertyInfo1.Name.CompareTo(propertyInfo2.Name); });

// write property names
foreach (PropertyInfo propertyInfo in propertyInfos)
{
  Console.WriteLine(propertyInfo.Name);
}

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