Question

I have produced a custom attribute which simply marks a classes property as being the ‘display name’. What I would like to do is find the property within a given class which has been marked with my attribute. As far as I know, the only way I can do this is to loop through each property (via reflection) and check what attributes it has assigned. Is there any easier/quicker way than this?

foreach (PropertyInfo property in myClassProperties)
{
  //Get the alias attributes.
  object[] attr=
  property.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DisplayField), true);

  if(attr.Count() > 0)
  {
   // This is a display field!
  }
}

Thanks

Answer 1

Well, it’s slightly simpler than checking all its attributes to find the one you want – you can ask any member whether it has a particular attribute using IsDefined:

var properties = type.GetProperties()
                     .Where(p => p.IsDefined(typeof(MyAttribute), false));

Obviously you can cache that result on a per-type basis if you’re going to use it multiple times.