Setting/getting the class properties by string name [duplicate]

Question

What I'm trying to do is setting the value of the property in a class using a string. For example, my class has the following properties:

myClass.Name myClass.Address myClass.PhoneNumber myClass.FaxNumber 

All the fields are of string type so I know ahead of time that it's always a string. Now, I want to be able to set the properties using a string as you could do with a DataSet object. Something like this:

myClass["Name"] = "John" myClass["Address"] = "1112 River St., Boulder, CO" 

Ideally, I want to just assign a variable and then set the property using that string name from the variable:

string propName = "Name" myClass[propName] = "John" 

I was reading about reflection and maybe it's the way to do it but I'm not sure how to go about setting that up while keeping the property access intact in the class. I want to still be able to use:

myClass.Name = "John" 

Any code examples would be really great.

Answer 1

You can add indexer property, a pseudocode:

public class MyClass  {      public object this[string propertyName]       {         get         {            // probably faster without reflection:            // like:  return Properties.Settings.Default.PropertyValues[propertyName]             // instead of the following            Type myType = typeof(MyClass);                               PropertyInfo myPropInfo = myType.GetProperty(propertyName);            return myPropInfo.GetValue(this, null);         }         set         {            Type myType = typeof(MyClass);                               PropertyInfo myPropInfo = myType.GetProperty(propertyName);            myPropInfo.SetValue(this, value, null);         }      } } 

Answer 2

You can add an indexer to your class and use reflection to aces the properties:

using System.Reflection;  public class MyClass {      public object this[string name]     {         get         {             var properties = typeof(MyClass)                     .GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);              foreach (var property in properties)             {                 if (property.Name == name && property.CanRead)                     return property.GetValue(this, null);             }              throw new ArgumentException("Can't find property");          }         set {             return;         }     } }