C# nested property accessor
I recently had the need to access a property in another property in C#. Accessing a property value is trivial using PropertyInfo but it’s only capable of accessing properties on the current object and cannot go any deeper. Such was my need that I created some recursive extension methods to help set/get properties at any depth as well as copy a value from one object to another. Whilst not a perfect solution, this does seem to work well for my needs and hasn’t caused any side-effects.
public static void CopyPropertyValues<T>(T x, T y, string[] propertyNames)
{
foreach (var name in propertyNames)
{
try
{
SetPropertyValue(name, x, GetPropertyValue(name, y));
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Console.WriteLine(e);
throw;
}
}
}
public static object GetPropertyValue<T>(string name, T obj)
{
try
{
var parts = name.Split('.').ToList();
var currentPart = parts[0];
PropertyInfo propertyInfo = obj.GetType().GetProperty(currentPart);
if (propertyInfo == null)
{
return null;
}
if (name.IndexOf(".") > -1)
{
parts.Remove(currentPart);
return GetPropertyValue(string.Join(".", parts), propertyInfo.GetValue(obj));
}
else
{
return propertyInfo.GetValue(obj);
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Console.WriteLine(e);
throw;
}
}
public static void SetPropertyValue<T>(string name, T obj, object value)
{
try
{
var parts = name.Split('.').ToList();
var currentPart = parts[0];
PropertyInfo propertyInfo = obj.GetType().GetProperty(currentPart);
if (propertyInfo == null)
{
return;
}
if (name.IndexOf(".") > -1)
{
parts.Remove(currentPart);
SetPropertyValue(string.Join(".", parts), propertyInfo.GetValue(obj), value);
}
else
{
propertyInfo.SetValue(obj, value);
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
Console.WriteLine(e);
throw;
}
}