Question

I need a function with the following signature:

System.Reflection.PropertyInfo getPropertyInfo(System.Type type, string NavigationPath)

or in VB:

Function GetPropertyInfo(Type As System.Type, NavigationPath As String) As System.Reflection.PropertyInfo

Usage:

Dim MyPropertyInfo As PropertyInfo = GetPropertyInfo(GetType(Order),"Customer.Address.State.Code")
Dim DisplayName As String = MyStringFunctions.FriendlyName(MyPropertyInfo.Name)

It uses period-delimited path navigation.
I can’t figure out how to harness the databinding framework to do this.
First hurdle is it seems only to want to work with objects (not types),
second hurdle is I couldn’t even get it to work with objects outside of a control.
I would think under the hood somewhere databinding deals with types and property types; it would have to!

Thanks!

Answer 1

Here’s what I came up with, that doesn’t use binding infrastructure.
I still think binding would do a better job.

  Function GetPropertyInfo(Type As System.Type, NavigationPath As String) As System.Reflection.PropertyInfo
    For Each Part As String In NavigationPath.Split(".")
      GetPropertyInfo = Type.GetProperty(Part)
      If GetPropertyInfo IsNot Nothing Then
        Type = GetPropertyInfo.PropertyType
      End If
    Next
  End Function