Question

I have the following code where I’m trying to get all the properties of an object as well as the property values. Some properties can be collections or collections of collections, so I tried to set up a recursive function for those types. Unfortunately it’s not working, erroring on this line

if (property.GetValue(item, null) is IEnumerable)

and I don’t know what needs changed. Can anyone help here? Thanks.

public static string PackageError(IEnumerable<object> obj)
{
    var sb = new StringBuilder();

    foreach (object o in obj)
    {
        sb.Append("<strong>Object Data - " + o.GetType().Name + "</strong>");
        sb.Append("<p>");

        PropertyInfo[] properties = o.GetType().GetProperties();
        foreach (PropertyInfo pi in properties)
        {
            if (pi.GetValue(o, null) is IEnumerable && !(pi.GetValue(o, null) is string))
                sb.Append(GetCollectionPropertyValues((IEnumerable)pi.GetValue(o, null)));
            else
                sb.Append(pi.Name + ": " + pi.GetValue(o, null) + "<br />");
        }

        sb.Append("</p>");
    }

    return sb.ToString();
}

public static string GetCollectionPropertyValues(IEnumerable collectionProperty)
{
    var sb = new StringBuilder();

    foreach (object item in collectionProperty)
    {
        PropertyInfo[] properties = item.GetType().GetProperties();
        foreach (var property in properties)
        {
            if (property.GetValue(item, null) is IEnumerable)
                sb.Append(GetCollectionPropertyValues((IEnumerable)property.GetValue(item, null)));
            else
                sb.Append(property.Name + ": " + property.GetValue(item, null) + "<br />");
        }
    }

    return sb.ToString();
}

Answer 1

I would suggest using an existing serialization mechanism, such as XML serialization or JSON serialization, to provide this information if you are trying to make it generic.