Tim Van Wassenhove

Passionate geek, interested in Technology. Proud father of two

14 Mar 2008

Using Linq for statically-typed reflection

I discovered the TypedReflector

on Daniel Cazzulino’s Blog. In essence, a simplified version of the code looks like

public static class Reflector
{
	public static PropertyInfo GetProperty<t, TRet>(Expression<func<t, TRet>> expression)
	{
		return GetMemberInfo(expression) as PropertyInfo;
	}

	public static FieldInfo GetField<t, TRet>(Expression<func<t, TRet>> expression)
	{
		return GetMemberInfo(expression) as FieldInfo;
	}

	public static MethodInfo GetMethod<t, TRet>(Expression<func<t, TRet>> expression)
	{
		return GetMemberInfo(expression) as MethodInfo;
	}

	public static MemberInfo GetMemberInfo(Expression memberInfoExpression)
	{
		Expression lambdaBodyExpression = ((LambdaExpression)memberInfoExpression).Body;
		switch (lambdaBodyExpression.NodeType)
		{
			case ExpressionType.MemberAccess:
			return ((MemberExpression)lambdaBodyExpression).Member;
			
			case ExpressionType.Call:
			return ((MethodCallExpression)lambdaBodyExpression).Method;
			
			default:
			throw new ArgumentException("Unsupported NodeType");
		}
	}
}

This class allows me to write the following

PropertyInfo namePropertyInfo = Reflector.GetProperty<person, string>(p => p.Surname);

Not only can i be sure that the lambda (and thus the namePropertyInfo.Invoke) will always return a string, i can also use it to avoid ‘hardcoded’ propertynames

//const string SurnameProperty = "Surname";
//comboBox1.DisplayMember = SurnameProperty;
comboBox1.DisplayMember = Reflector.GetProperty<person, string>(p => p.Surname).Name;