Is there an easy way to convert object properties to a dictionary

Question

I have a database object (a row), that has lots of properties (columns) that map to form fields (asp:textbox, asp:dropdownlist etc). I would like to transform this

Answer 1

The HtmlHelper class allows a conversion of Anonymouns Object to RouteValueDictonary and I suppose you could use a .ToString() on each value to get the string repersentation:

 var linkAttributes = System.Web.Mvc.HtmlHelper.AnonymousObjectToHtmlAttributes(linkHtmlAttributes);

The down side is this is part of the ASP.NET MVC Framework. Using a .NET Reflector, the code inside of the method is as follows:

public static RouteValueDictionary AnonymousObjectToHtmlAttributes(object htmlAttributes)
{
   RouteValueDictionary dictionary = new RouteValueDictionary();
  if (htmlAttributes != null)
  {
     foreach (PropertyDescriptor descriptor in TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(htmlAttributes))
     {
            dictionary.Add(descriptor.Name.Replace('_', '-'), descriptor.GetValue(htmlAttributes));
       }
 }
    return dictionary;
 }

You'll see that this code is identical to the answer Yahia gave you, and his answer provides a Dictonary. With the reflected code I gave you you could easily convert a RouteValueDictionary to Dictonary but Yahia's answer is a one liner.

EDIT - I've added the code for what could be a method to do your conversion:

EDIT 2 - I've added null checking to the code and used String.Format for the string value

    public static Dictionary ObjectToDictionary(object value)
    {
        Dictionary dictionary = new Dictionary();
        if (value != null)
        {
            foreach (System.ComponentModel.PropertyDescriptor descriptor in System.ComponentModel.TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(value))
            {
                if(descriptor != null && descriptor.Name != null)
                {
                     object propValue = descriptor.GetValue(value);
                     if(propValue != null)
                          dictionary.Add(descriptor.Name,String.Format("{0}",propValue));
            }
        }
        return dictionary;
    }

And to go from a Dictionary to an object check http://automapper.org/ which was suggested in this thread Convert dictionary to anonymous object