Question

I’m using reflection to iterate over all the members of a given type. This interaction must support inheritance, since most type will be extended as necessary.

I’ve just found out that the order in which types present themselves when iterating over GetMembers isn’t really what I’d expect — the types of the derived classes appear first, in their current order, and the types of the base classes later, again in their current order.

Source:

using System;

class Program 
{
        class SomeClass
        {
            public string First { get; set; }
            public int Second;
        }

        class AnotherClass : SomeClass
        {
            public int Third { get; set; }
            public string Fourth;
        } 

        public static void Main()
        {
            var obj = new AnotherClass { First = "asd", Second = 10};

            foreach (var member in obj.GetType().GetMembers())
            {
                Console.WriteLine(member.Name);
            }
        }
}

Output:

    get_Third
    set_Third
    get_First
    set_First
    Equals
    GetHashCode
    GetType
    ToString
    .ctor
    Third
    First
    Fourth
    Second

You can check a run here.

I’d like to invert this situation, using reflection to get only types from the base class, then from the derived. Is there any way to do this?

Another question on the same line: when searching members, properties come first and fields second. Anyway to change this behavior as well, or the metadata created will always present in that order?

Thanks!

Answer 1

To access the base type use BaseType property.

To check if a member is declared in the same type, use DeclaringType property:

public static bool DeclaredInType(Type typeToCheck, MemberInfo member)
{
    return typeToCheck.Equals(member.DeclaringType);
}    

EDIT: you can sort by type by using LINQ:

public static MemberInfo[] SortMembers(IEnumerable<MemberInfo> members)
{
    return members.OrderBy(m => m.GetType().Name)
                  .ToArray();
}