Question

I have an intermediary object between my Entity Framework entities and a JSON object that I serialize/deserialize in order to import and export to a text file.

When I am exporting from the entity framework I use the following code to iterate through the entity types properties…If the property in the entity matches the property from an enum that I have, the property gets saved to the JSON object. This stops entity specific properties from cluttering up my JSON.

var blockProperties = typeof(FixedLengthBlock).GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);
foreach (var property in blockProperties)
{

    if (Enum.GetNames(typeof(ModuleSettingEnum)).Contains(property.Name.ToLower()) && property.GetValue((FixedLengthBlock)element, null) != null)
        blockJsonEntity.Properties.Add(property.Name, property.GetValue((FixedLengthBlock)element, null).ToString());
}

While the above code works, I cannot think of a similar way to do the opposite. When reading back from JSON I have the properties/values in a dictionary. I know that I can run through the properties of the EF Entity and search the dictionary if it contains a key like this:

var blockProperties = typeof(FixedLengthBlock).GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);
foreach (var property in blockProperties)
{
        if (block.Properties.ContainsKey(property.Name))
   {
     ???????What goes here??????
   }
}

How do I get the matched property into the newly created entity I’ve made to receive the information. I’d really like to avoid a large switch statement.

My Json object looks like this:

public class JsonEntity
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Type { get; set; }
    public Dictionary<string, string> Properties { get; set; }
    public List<JsonEntity> SubEntities { get; set; } 

    public JsonEntity()
    {
        Properties = new Dictionary<string, string>();

    }
}

Answer 1

Okay, so if we’re deserializing into the same type let’s try this:

var bindingFlags = BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance;
var blockProperties = typeof(FixedLengthBlock).GetProperties(bindingFlags);
var newObj = Activator.CreateInstance(typeof(FixedLengthBlock))
foreach (var property in blockProperties)
{
    if (block.Properties.ContainsKey(property.Name))
    {
        var propertyInfo = newObj.GetType().GetProperty(property.Name, bindingFlags);
        if (propertyInfo == null) { continue; }
        propertyInfo.SetValue(newObj, block.Properties[property.Name]);
    }
}