Question

A particular class has a Hashtable containing 1..N elements. I’m wondering if there are generic getter/setter methods for the Hashtable used in a class. I’m looking to make the hashtable values behave more like regular object properties:

public class foo 
{
  private HashTable _stuff;
  public HashTable stuff { get; set; }
  public foo() {}
}

I was wondering if something like this can happen:

foo bar = new foo();
bar.stuff.name; //returns the data in the 'name' index if it exists
bar.stuff.name = "Me"; //sets the stuff[name] value = "me"

Answer 1

There’s nothing like that in the current version of C#. The dynamic stuff in C# 4.0 will make this easier.

In the meantime, why not just make Name (and other values) simple properties? While you’re at it, you’ll find the generic Dictionary<K,V> easier to work with than HashTable.