Question

Given a string with the same name of an object field, how can I get the reference to the object field?

For example, say I pass in a string called “field1” to the GetFieldByStr method, and the object has an field name field1, how can I get a reference to the field1 object? I’m assuming using reflection somehow.

class Example {
   private FieldExample attr1;

   void GetFieldByStr(String str) {
      // We get passed in "field1" as a string, now I want 
      // to get the field1 attribute.
   }
}

Answer 1

You need to use Reflection:

FieldInfo field = typeof(Example).GetField(str);
object value = field.GetValue(this);

(For properties, use PropertyInfo)

Note that value is an object; in order to do anything useful with it, you’ll need to cast it to some class or interface (or use dynamic in C# 4).