C# Reflection

In c#, Reflection is useful to get the type information that describes assemblies, modules, members, parameters, and other entities in the managed code by examining their metadata.

 

In c#, the System.Reflection namespace will contain all the classes that provide access to the metadata of managed code to get the type information.

 

We can also use reflection to create type instances dynamically at runtime, bind the type to an existing object or get the type from an existing object and invoke its methods or access its fields and properties. If we define any attributes in our code, those can also access by using reflection.

C# Reflection Example

Following is the example of using reflection to get the class object properties and values in c#.

 

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Reflection;

namespace TutlaneExamples
{
    class Program
    {
       static void Main(string[] args)
       {
          List<userdetails> items = new List<userdetails>();
          items.Add(new userdetails { userid = 1, username = "suresh", location = "chennai" });
          items.Add(new userdetails { userid = 2, username = "rohini", location = "guntur" });
          items.Add(new userdetails { userid = 3, username = "praveen", location = "bangalore" });
          items.Add(new userdetails { userid = 4, username = "sateesh", location = "vizag" });
          items.Add(new userdetails { userid = 5, username = "madhav", location = "nagpur" });
          items.Add(new userdetails { userid = 6, username = "honey", location = "nagpur" });
          string strmsg = string.Empty;
          foreach (var user in items)
          {
             strmsg = GetPropertyValues(user);
             Console.WriteLine(strmsg);
          }
          Console.ReadLine();
       }
       private static string GetPropertyValues(userdetails user)
       {
          Type type = user.GetType();
          PropertyInfo[] props = type.GetProperties();
          string str = "{";
          foreach (var prop in props)
          {
            str += (prop.Name + ":" + prop.GetValue(user) + ":" + prop.PropertyType.Name) + ",";
          }
          return str.Remove(str.Length - 1) + "}";
       }
    }
    class userdetails
    {
        public int userid { get; set; }
        public string username { get; set; }
        public string location { get; set; }
    }
}

If you observe the above example, we added System.Reflection namespace to get the userdetails class object property details. Here, we used Type & PropertyInfo classes to get the required object property details.

 

When we execute the above program, we will get the result as shown below.

 

C# Reflection Example Result

 

If you observe the above result, we are able to get the userdetails class object property details, including name, value, and type.

C# Reflection Overview

Following are the important points which we need to remember about reflection in c#.

 

  • Reflection is useful to get the type information that describes assemblies, modules, members, parameters, and other entities in the managed code by examining their metadata.
  • By reflection, we can create type instances dynamically at runtime, bind or get the type from an existing object and invoke its methods or access its fields and properties.
  • It provides access to perform late binding and get methods type information created at runtime.
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