Get the name of a property as a string

Question

5.00/5 (1 vote)

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Hi Guys/Gals,

Firstly, if I search for my question in Google I get ALOT of result.
I've read a few of them, and it might just be their explanations but I don't understand if what they are doing will give me what I need.

Basically I have a class which looks a bit like this:

C#

public class Location {
   public string Area {get;set;}
   public string Depot {get;set;}
}

I am reading an Excel into a dataset and then processing the rows in one of the tables.
I have a list of headers which are stored in an object that looks a bit like this:

C#

public class HeaderItem {
   public string HeaderText {get;set;}
   public string PropertyName {get;set;}
}

What I'm trying to do is something like this (this is a mix of code and "sudo"):

C#

foreach(DataRow row in myDataTable)
{
   var loc = new Location();
   loc.Area = row[myHeaders.FirstWhere(h=>h.PropertyName == ##Get "Area" as string##).HeaderText].ToString();
}

------------------------------------
Edit based on first comment:

I would like to put something like:

loc.Area = row[myHeaders.FirstWhere(h=>h.PropertyName == "Area").HeaderText].ToString();

But rather than have a literal string in the comparison use the property name.

-------------------------------------

The examples I've seen have generally refereed to using using
System.Reflection.MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod()
Which I would imagine in this case would return the name of the wrapped method (in this case "ReadLocation").

Is there a way I can do what I'm after, or a better way than my current approach?

For reference these are two questions out of the many I've read already:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15333249/how-to-get-name-of-current-property[^]
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1206023/how-to-get-current-property-name-via-reflection[^]

I did wonder about using this principle:
http://www.csharp-examples.net/reflection-property-names/[^]

But I could figure the logic of how to go about it, so if anyone has any ideas I'd appreciate it.

Posted 5-Mar-15 1:29am

Pheonyx

Updated 5-Mar-15 2:00am

v2

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Comments

Kuthuparakkal 5-Mar-15 7:55am

I didnt quite understand the objective. Could you explain it in simple English rather than pseudo code ?

Pheonyx 5-Mar-15 8:00am

I've edited the question, hope that additional helps.

Kuthuparakkal 5-Mar-15 8:51am

I posted a solution, please have a look.

George Jonsson 5-Mar-15 8:09am

If I understand you correctly, you want to get the string "Area" from code instead of manually hard code it?
In that case Reflection is your friend. Look for Type.GetProperties and the likes.

2 solutions

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Richard Deeming · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-05T02:17:00

This will be trivial in C# 6:

C#

loc.Area = row[myHeaders.First(h => h.PropertyName == nameof(loc.Area)).HeaderText].ToString();

For earlier versions, something like this[^] will work, albeit with a slight performance penalty:

C#

loc.Area = row[myHeaders.First(h => h.PropertyName == default(Location).GetMemberName(x => x.Area)).HeaderText].ToString();

NB: You don't need a custom FirstWhere extension method; the built-in First method[^] has an overload which accepts a filter predicate.

Kuthuparakkal · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-05T02:51:00

Solution 2

Please try this:

C#

foreach(DataRow row in myDataTable.Rows)
{
    var loc = new Location();
    var properties = loc.GetType().GetProperties();

    foreach (PropertyInfo pinfo in properties)
    {
        HeaderItem tempheader = myHeaders.FirstOrDefault(h => h.PropertyName == pinfo.Name);

        if (tempheader != null)
        {
            object value = row[tempheader.HeaderText].ToString();
            pinfo.SetValue(loc, value, null);
        }
    }

}

Posted 5-Mar-15 2:51am

Kuthuparakkal

Comments

Pheonyx 5-Mar-15 9:12am

This was really helpful, and it looks like it will solve my problem in a more re-usable way than what I was doing. I've accepted bother as answers as they help with both aspects of what I was trying to do. Much appreciated. +5

Kuthuparakkal 5-Mar-15 9:43am

you are welcome!