Question

I have created a simple application where I fetch questions from an Access database and store the answers to another Access database. I am not sure how many questions client would like to ask, so I can’t hardcode that number.

So, column names for answers table (besides user information like first, last name and so on) will be a1, a2, a3 … aN.

And finally the problem!

For testing purposes I have hardcoded saving first 3 answers like this:

newEntry.a1 = answers(0)
newEntry.a2 = answers(1)
newEntry.a3 = answers(2)

Now I would like to iterate through all properties based on count of “a-type” properties:

'aCount is number of "a-type" properties
For i = 0 To aCount - 1
    Dim property As String
    property = "a" & (i + 1)
    newEntry.property = answers(i)
Next

Of course, above code does not work, it is just a pseudo-code idea that “should” to the same as my hardcoded example.

Is it possible to iterate through predefined properties of newEntry object in that manner?

I hope my question was clear enough. Thank you very much in advance!

Answer 1

Yes there is using reflection, you’d be better off using a collection to store your answers.

lots of ways you could do it, but

Dictionary<String,List<String>> would be an easy first choice then

PSEUDO Code

for(int index = 0; index<aCount; index++)
{
  newEntries.Add["A"].Add(answers[index]);
}

so A4 is simply newEntries[“A”][3];