Question

There has been a lot of sentiment to include a nameof operator in C#. As an example of how this operator would work, nameof(Customer.Name) would return the string 'Name'.

I have a domain object. And I have to bind it. And I need names of properties as strings then. And I want them to be type-safe.

I remember coming across a workaround in .NET 3.5 which provided the functionality of nameof and involved lambda expressions. However, I have not been able to locate this workaround. Can anyone provide that workaround to me?

I am also interested in a way to implement the functionality of nameof in .NET 2.0 if that is possible.

Answer 1

This code basically does that:

class Program {     static void Main()     {         var propName = Nameof<SampleClass>.Property(e => e.Name);          Console.WriteLine(propName);     } }  public class Nameof<T> {     public static string Property<TProp>(Expression<Func<T, TProp>> expression)     {         var body = expression.Body as MemberExpression;         if(body == null)             throw new ArgumentException(''expression' should be a member expression');         return body.Member.Name;     } } 

(Of course it is 3.5 code…)