string to variable name

Question

I have class(Customer) which holds more than 200 string variables as property. I'm using method with parameter of key and value. I trying to supply key and value from xml file. For this, value has to be substituted by Customer class's property(string variables).

ie

Customer
{
  public string Name{return _name};

  public string Address{return _address};
}


CallInput
{
  StringTempelate tempelate = new StringTempelate();
  foreach(item in items)
  tempelate .SetAttribure(item.key, item.Value -->   //Say this value is Name, so it has to substitute Customer.Name
}

is it possible?

Answer 1

You can use reflection to set the properties 'by name'.

using System.Reflection;
...
myCustomer.GetType().GetProperty(item.Key).SetValue(myCustomer, item.Value, null);

You can also read the properties with GetValue, or get a list of all property names using GetType().GetProperties(), which returns an array of PropertyInfo (the Name property contains the properties name)

Answer 2

Well, you can use Type.GetProperty(name) to get a PropertyInfo, then call GetValue.

For example:

// There may already be a field for this somewhere in the framework...
private static readonly object[] EmptyArray = new object[0];

...

PropertyInfo prop = typeof(Customer).GetProperty(item.key);
if (prop == null)
{
    // Eek! Throw an exception or whatever...
    // You might also want to check the property type
    // and that it's readable
}
string value = (string) prop.GetValue(customer, EmptyArray);
template.SetTemplateAttribute(item.key, value);

Note that if you do this a lot you may want to convert the properties into Func<Customer, string> delegate instances - that will be much faster, but more complicated. See my blog post about creating delegates via reflection for more information.

Answer 3

Reflection is an option, but 200 properties is... a lot. As it happens, I'm working on something like this at the moment, but the classes are created by code-gen. To fit "by name" usage, I've added an indexer (during the code generation phase):

public object this[string propertyName] {
    get {
        switch(propertyName) {
            /* these are dynamic based on the the feed */
            case "Name": return Name;
            case "DateOfBirth": return DateOfBirth;
            ... etc ...
            /* fixed default */
            default: throw new ArgumentException("propertyName");
        }
    }
}

This gives the convenience of "by name", but good performance.

Answer 4

Use reflection and a dictionary object as your items collection.

Dictionary<string,string> customerProps = new Dictionary<string,string>();
Customer myCustomer = new Customer(); //Or however you're getting a customer object

foreach (PropertyInfo p in typeof(Customer).GetProperties())
{
    customerProps.Add(p.Name, p.GetValue(customer, null));
}