CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.netreflection
Mad Halfling
Mad Halfling

Reputation: 968

Getting a C# .NET Resource Property Name By Explicitly Referencing The Property

Got a bit of an odd one but there's a reason behind my madness.

I have a resource I have set up with some string properties on it, for example MenuAdminLabel and MenuAccountsLabel that have values like "Admin" and "Accounts" respectively. I need to pass the label property names into a method and I'm well aware I could just pass these in as strings like "MenuAdminLabel" and "MenuAccountsLabel" but I would like these to be validated by the compiler rather than being simple strings as there will be a lot of properties on the resource and I want to ensure each reference is correct.

The trouble is if I access Resource.MenuAdminLabel I (obviously) get the value of the resource property rather than the property name, I can access the property list by using typeof(Localisation.Resources).GetProperties() but, again, I'm having to use a literal string to get the property name from this rather than something explicitly using Localisation.Resource.MenuAdminLabel that the compiler can validate.

How can I do this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 961

Answers (1)

Jens
Jens

Reputation: 25563

That's a problem often faced when implementing INotifyPropertyChanged. The solution is to use a lambda expression like

MyMethod(() => Localisation.MenuAdminLabel);

instead of 

MyMethod("MenuAdminLabel");

and analyse the expression. One example implementation can be found in this answer. For your case, it might look like:

private void MyMethod<TValue>(Expression<Func<TValue>> propertySelector)
{
    var memberExpression = propertySelector.Body as MemberExpression;
    if (memberExpression == null)
        throw new ArgumentException();

    string name = memberExpression.Member.Name;

    // Do stuff with name

}

Upvotes: 2

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