Question

I wanted to make a dynamic method in which i pass any instance of object i made, for example:

public class Employee()
{
  public string FName;
  public string SName;
  .....etc.
}

The method i want is like the following:

public void methodName(Object oObject)
{
  //lets say that i have passed object employee to it.
}

Is it possible to extract any values from the oObject, i have tried to do so but it have no attributes to do so, and when i put in the watch i can acutally see all the attribute of class employee in it.

So is there any way ?

Answer 1

There are many ways.

Update: you say you want the whole object. Casting or interfaces to expose the properties is the way foward.

You can cast the object to the specific type:

if (oObject is Employee)
{
    string name = (oObject as Employee).FName;
}

You can expose an interface that defines what the method expects, then provided types implement the interface:

public interface IFirstName
{
    string FName { get; }
}

public void methodName(IFirstName objectWithFirstName)
{
    string name = objectWithFirstName.FName;
}

You can use dynamic and hope for the best at runtime (.NET 4):

public void methodName(dynamic oObject)
{
    string name = oObject.FName;
}

And then there is reflection.

But the better question to ask is, is this a good method? I would be a little skeptical about methods that take anything and make expectations about things… though that’s not to say it doesn’t or shouldn’t happen.