Question

I have an assembly and some classes. What I’m trying to do is create an instance of a class and fill its properties in a generic way, something like:

public T FillObject(IDictionary<string,object> values)
{
    /// CREATE INSTANCE
    /// FILL THE PROPERTIES WITH THE VALUES
}

Reflection is the best way but its too slow, instead I’ve heard that Reflection.Emit is faster, so, is there a way to instantiate the class and fill its properties with Reflection.Emit?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

On this occasion, I suggest HyperDescriptor; it is like reflection, but with IL generation thrown in the middle for performance; then, you just use regular component-model code:

object obj = Activator.CreateInstance(typeof(T));
var props = TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(typeof(T));
foreach(var pair in data)
{
    props[pair.Key].SetValue(obj, pair.Value);
}

Edit; for a bit of a 2012 update, FastMember involves less abstraction:

var accessor = TypeAccessor.Create(typeof(T));
foreach(var pair in data)
{
    accessor[obj, pair.Key] = pair.Value;
}

In addition to being more direct, FastMember will work with properly dynamic types, too – not just reflection.