Question

I’m trying to get the name of a method on a type using a lambda expression. I’m using Windows Identity Foundation and need to define access policies with the type name with namespace as a resource and the method name as the action. Here is an example.

This is the type I would be getting the type name and method name from:

namespace My.OrderEntry {
    public class Order {
        public void AddItem(string itemNumber, int quantity) {}
    }
}

This is how I would like to define the access policy through a DSL:

ForResource<Order>().Performing(o => o.AddItem).AllowUsersHaving(new Claim());

From that statement, I would like to get “My.OrderEntry.Order” as the resource and “AddItem” as the action. Getting the type name with namespace is no problem, but I don’t think I can use a lambda for a method like I’m trying to do.

public static IPermissionExp Performing<T>(
    this IActionExp<T> exp,
    Func<T, delegate???> action) {} //this is where I don't know what to define

Is this sort of thing even possible to do? Is there another way to do this sort of thing without using magic strings?

Answer 1

There are two ways to do this:

1: You could make overloads that take the various Func and Action delegates(eg Expression<Func<T, Func<TParam1,TParam2, TReturn>>. Note that your callers would need to specify the generic parameters explicitly, either in the method call or by creating the delegate. This would be used like this:

ForResource<Order>().Performing(o => new Action<string>(o.AddItem)).AllowUsersHaving(new Claim());

---

2: You could take an Expression<Action> that contains a method call, and parse out the MethodInfo being called from the expression tree. This would be used like this:

ForResource<Order>().Performing(o => { o.AddItem(null); }).AllowUsersHaving(new Claim());