How to Extract Constants from a Type Using C# Reflection?

How to Extract Constants from any Type Using Reflection

Reflection provides a powerful way to inspect types at runtime. This allows you to retrieve information about a type's properties, methods, and even its constants.

To get all constants of a type using reflection, you can utilize the GetFields method with specific binding flags:

BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.FlattenHierarchy

These flags ensure that you retrieve all public, static fields that are declared at the current type or any of its base types.

After retrieving the array of FieldInfo objects, you can filter them to only include constants by checking the IsLiteral and IsInitOnly flags:

if(fi.IsLiteral && !fi.IsInitOnly)

The IsLiteral flag indicates that the field's value is assigned at compile time, while the IsInitOnly flag indicates that the field can be initialized only in the constructor. For constants, both these flags should be true.

Using this approach, you can efficiently extract all constants from any type using reflection:

private List<FieldInfo> GetConstants(Type type)
{
    return type.GetFields(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Static |
            BindingFlags.FlattenHierarchy)
        .Where(fi => fi.IsLiteral && !fi.IsInitOnly).ToList();
}

This method returns a list of FieldInfo objects that represent the constants declared within the specified type.

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