Question

How can I get this anonymous function to return “object.Property” as a string?

() => object.Property;

Thanks!

Answer 1

Edit following clarification of requirements:

var foo = GetYourObjectFromSomewhere();
string bar = ExprToString(() => foo.Property);    // bar = "foo.Property"

// ...

public static string ExprToString<T>(Expression<Func<T>> e)
{
    // use a stack and a loop so that we can cope with nested properties
    // for example, "() => foo.First.Second.Third.Fourth.Property" etc

    Stack<string> stack = new Stack<string>();

    MemberExpression me = e.Body as MemberExpression;
    while (me != null)
    {
        stack.Push(me.Member.Name);

        me = me.Expression as MemberExpression;
    }

    return string.Join(".", stack.ToArray());
}

Original answer:

It’s not entirely clear what you need, or what the type of object.Property is in the first place. Maybe one of the following would do the trick?

// either
() => (string)object.Property

// or
() => object.Property.ToString()