Question

I want to design a table user control and dynamically add the properties of custom objects. I want to populate this table with a collection object with a generic type. How can I do that ? I can not send the properties of the class to PopulateTable with its custom headers.

What I have so far (in a usercontrol) is..

<table class="datatable">
    <thead>
        <asp:Literal id="ltrlHeaders" runat="server" />
    </thead>
    <tbody>
        <asp:Literal runat="server" ID="ltrlContent" />
    </tbody>
</table>

    public void PopulateTable(? myCollection)
    {
        List<string> headers = new List<string>();
        FieldInfo[] fields = type.GetFields();
        foreach (FieldInfo f in fields)
        {
            headers.Add(f.Name);
        }

        // headers
        StringBuilder headerString = new StringBuilder();
        headerString.Append("<thead>");
        headers.ForEach(delegate(string h)
        {
            headerString.Append(String.Format("<th>{0}</th>", h));
        });
        headerString.Append("</thead>");
        ltrlHeaders.Text = headerString.ToString();

        StringBuilder contentString = new StringBuilder();

        foreach (var item in list)
        {
            contentString.Append("<tr>");
            foreach (string fieldInfo in headers)
            {
                contentString.Append(String.Format("<td>{0}</td>", type.GetField(fieldInfo).GetValue(item) as string));
            }
            contentString.Append("</tr>");
        }
        ltrlContent.Text = contentString.ToString();
    }

Answer 1

public void PopulateTable<T>(T myCollection)

Assuming that T objects can be cast to string. Or you might want:

public void PopulateTable<T>(IEnumerable<T> myCollection)

if you wanted to be able to pass a collection and know something about its interface.