TryAtSoftware.Extensions.Reflection 1.0.0

About the project

TryAtSoftware.Extensions.Reflection is a library containing extension methods and utility components that should simplify (and optimize) some common operations with reflection.

About us

Try At Software is a software development company based in Bulgaria. We are mainly using dotnet technologies (C#, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core, etc.) and our main idea is to provide a set of tools that can simplify the majority of work a developer does on a daily basis.

Getting started

TypeNames

This is an utility component that should construct and cache a beautified name for a type. There are two ways to use it:

• Throughout the generic TypeNames<T> class and the Value property;
• Throughout the non-generic TypeNames class and the Get(type) method.

The main idea behind this component is to provide efficiently a meaningful and readable type name (including open generics). Here is a comparison between the type.ToString() and TypeNames.Get(type):

IMembersBinder

This is an interface defining the structure of an utility component exposing information about a specific subset of the members for a given type. There are two classes implementing this interface - a non-generic MembersBinder and a generic MembersBinder<T>. They accept the following parameters throughout their constructors:

• isValid: A filtering function that should determine whether or not a member should be included within the final result set. If no value is provided for this parameter, every member will be included.
• keySelector: A function mapping each each member to unique key. If no value is provided to this parameter, the name of the member will be used (which means that in case of overrides or members with the same name there will be issues)
• bindingFlags: The binding flags used to control the member search throughout reflection.

Example:

IMembersBinder binder = new MembersBinder<TEntity>(IsValidMember, BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);

// Equivalent to:
// IMembersBinder = new MembersBinder(typeof(TEntity), IsValidMember, BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);

static bool IsValidMember(MemberInfo memberInfo)
    => memberInfo switch
    {
        PropertyInfo pi => pi.CanWrite,
        FieldInfo _ => true,
        _ => false
    };

// Now every discovered member for the `TEntity` type will be mapped against its name throughout the `binder.MemberInfos` dictionary.

Expression extensions

ConstructPropertyAccessor

This is an extension method that should construct an expression for accessing the value of a specific property. Usually, it is a good practice to minimize the reflection calls in code. One way of achieving this is throughout expressions (that are constructed and compiled only once for the lifetime of a program). This expression method can be easily used with the IMembersBinder we described in the previous chapter. Conversions are also handled, e.g. a common use case is to retrieve the values of all properties by boxing them as object instances - this can be achieved without any additional configurations as long as the required conversion can be executed.

Example:

IMembersBinder binder = new MembersBinder<TEntity>(x => x is PropertyInfo { CanRead: true}, BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance);
List<Expression<Func<TEntity, object>>> valueAccessors = new List<Expression<Func<TEntity, object>>>();

foreach (var (_, memberInfo) in binder.MemberInfos)
{
    var propertyInfo = memberInfo as PropertyInfo;
    var accessor = propertyInfo.ConstructPropertyAccessor<TEntity, object>();
    valueAccessors.Add(accessor);
}