Question

I’d like to adapt this solution into an existing utility class of mine – just the GetProperty method. Thing is, my utility class is not generically-typed (i.e. the class declaration does not have a <T> parameter like PropertyHelper does), and I cannot add one for the time being.

In other words, I only want that GetProperty method to be generically-typed, not the whole class.

So what modifications do I need to make the method work? I’ve tried adding T to the list of generic types for that method:

public static PropertyInfo GetProperty<T, TValue>(Expression<Func<T, TValue>> selector)

But it gives me errors when I try doing the following:

PropertyInfo prop = MyUtilClass.GetProperty<Foo>(x => x.Bar);

Obviously, this is because GetProperty expects a T and a TValue…

I’d simply like to be able to call it like above. How?

Answer 1

I may be off base on this one, but it seems like if you want the code:

PropertyInfo prop = MyUtilClass.GetProperty<Foo>(x => x.Bar);

to work (assuming you’re trying to get property info about that “x.Bar”), you would just define your function as:

public static PropertyInfo GetProperty<T>(Expression<Func<T, Object>> selector)

and then from within your function you’d read the name of the member, as in

MemberExpression member = (MemberExpression)selector.Body;
String propertyName = member.Member.Name;
PropertyInfo info = typeof(T).GetProperty(propertyName, BindingFlags.Public 
            |  BindingFlags.Instance)
return info;

Like I said, I may be off base, but that’s what it seems like you’re trying to do.