How to get the list of properties of a class?

Question

How do I get a list of all the properties of a class?

Answer 1

You can use Reflection to do this: (from my library - this gets the names and values)

public static Dictionary DictionaryFromType(object atype)
{
    if (atype == null) return new Dictionary();
    Type t = atype.GetType();
    PropertyInfo[] props = t.GetProperties();
    Dictionary dict = new Dictionary();
    foreach (PropertyInfo prp in props)
    {
        object value = prp.GetValue(atype, new object[]{});
        dict.Add(prp.Name, value);
    }
    return dict;
}

This thing will not work for properties with an index - for that (it's getting unwieldy):

public static Dictionary DictionaryFromType(object atype, 
     Dictionary indexers)
{
    /* replace GetValue() call above with: */
    object value = prp.GetValue(atype, ((indexers.ContainsKey(prp.Name)?indexers[prp.Name]:new string[]{});
}

Also, to get only public properties: (see MSDN on BindingFlags enum)

/* replace */
PropertyInfo[] props = t.GetProperties();
/* with */
PropertyInfo[] props = t.GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public)

This works on anonymous types, too!
To just get the names:

public static string[] PropertiesFromType(object atype)
{
    if (atype == null) return new string[] {};
    Type t = atype.GetType();
    PropertyInfo[] props = t.GetProperties();
    List propNames = new List();
    foreach (PropertyInfo prp in props)
    {
        propNames.Add(prp.Name);
    }
    return propNames.ToArray();
}

And it's just about the same for just the values, or you can use:

GetDictionaryFromType().Keys
// or
GetDictionaryFromType().Values

But that's a bit slower, I would imagine.