Question

I want to declare a variable like this in C#

public anyType variable;

and then I can use it like this

variable["name1"] = anyValue1;
variable["name2"] = anyValue2;

I cannot find out any solution to declare what type of variable is to use it that way.
Please help me.

I appreciate any comments

---

Additional information:
I have a class:

public class Template
{
    public string Name {get; set; }
    public string Content {get; set;}
}

I want to set value for Template Content and Template Name like this

Template t = new Template();
t["Name"] = "template1";
t["Content"] = "templatecontent1";

not:

Template t = new Template();
t.Name = "template1";
t.Content = "templatecontent1";

I mean like a table attribute. Here I have table Template, it has 2 columns Name and Content. So that I can query Template[“Name”] and Template[“Content”]
Thanks

Answer 1

The type you need is Dictionary<string, object>. You can substitute object for whatever the type of anyValue1 and anyValue2 is.

EDIT: To allow indexers to set properties, you’ll almost certainly need reflection. Try this setter on your Template class:

public string this[string field]
{
  get
  {
    PropertyInfo prop = GetType().GetProperty(field);
    return prop.GetValue(this, null);
  }
  set
  {
    PropertyInfo prop = GetType().GetProperty(field);
    prop.SetValue(this, value, null);
  }
}

There’s no error handling in the above example though, so it’ll fail horribly if you try setting a property that doesn’t exist, or isn’t a string, or doesn’t have a getter/setter. You will need to add using System.Reflection to your uses clauses.