How Can I Use Reflection to Explore Class Properties in C#?

Leveraging Reflection to Access C# Class Properties

Object-oriented programming frequently requires interacting with class instances and their properties. Reflection offers a powerful mechanism for dynamically examining and manipulating these properties. This guide demonstrates how to retrieve a list of properties associated with a class.

Retrieving Property Information

The .NET Reflection API simplifies property exploration. Two primary methods achieve this:

• Obj.GetType().GetProperties(): Used when working with a specific class instance.
• typeof(ClassName).GetProperties(): Used when working directly with the class type.

Both methods yield an array of PropertyInfo objects, each representing a single property of the class.

Practical Example

Let's illustrate with a sample class:

public class Foo
{
    public int A { get; set; }
    public string B { get; set; }
}

The following code snippet retrieves and displays the values of all properties of a Foo instance:

Foo foo = new Foo { A = 1, B = "abc" };

foreach (var prop in foo.GetType().GetProperties())
{
    Console.WriteLine($"{prop.Name} = {prop.GetValue(foo)}");
}

Important Notes:

• Accessing static properties requires passing null as the second argument to GetValue().
• To inspect private or protected properties, utilize GetProperties(BindingFlags) with appropriate flags like BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance. Remember that accessing non-public members should be done cautiously and only when absolutely necessary.

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