C# add properties at runtime

Question

I\'ve read few posts, and I\'m still having troubles with adding properties to a class in runtime. It should be simple, because I have a class like this:

pub         


        

Answer 1

I don't think adding a property is the right thing to do here. The attributes like "Email" or "Phone" are just some additional pairs of a key and a value. You could use a Dictionary, but that would prevent you from using a key more than once (more than one email address for a contact for example). So you could just as well use a List>. Like that:

public class MyClass
{
    String Template;
    String Term;
    public List> Attributes { get; private set; }

    public MyClass() {
        Attributes = new List();
    }

    public void AddAttribute(string key, string value) {
        Attributes.Add(new KeyValuePair(key, value));
    }
}

// to be used like this: 
MyClass instance = new MyClass();
instance.AddAttribute("Email", "test@example.com");
instance.AddAttribute("Phone", "555-1234");