CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.net
PushCode
PushCode

Reputation: 1439

How to browse object hierarchy in C#

I went to an interview recently and there they asked me the following question:

Write a component to travel through an object hierarchy based on the data path passed in and return the value of the property implemeting the following method:

Public object getValueFromPath(object parentObj, string dataPath);

The object hierarchy will be some thing like this:

Object1
  objectRef2
    property1
    property2

parentObj will be Object1

dataPath will be objectRef2.property2

Can some one give me an idea how I can do that.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 670

Answers (1)

Andrew Cooper
Andrew Cooper

Reputation: 32586

You would need to use reflection.

First step would be to split the dataPath on ., and get a reference to the System.Type object representing the type of parentObj (parentObj.GetType()).

Then for each element in the path you would use something like .GetMember(...) on the Type object to find the member with that name, and update the current Type object accordingly.

Once you get to the property at the end, and you have the associated ProprtyInfo object, you then need to call .GetValue(...) to get the value of the property.

Upvotes: 5

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