How do I define a property to read an attribute from, without instantionating an object?

Question

Suppose I have:

class Person
{
[ColumnAttribute(\"ID\"]
    public int Id;
[ColumnAttribute(\"Name\"]
public string Name;
[ColumnAttribute(\"DateOfBirth\"]
    p         


        

Answer 1

This is definitely doable without instantiating a Person object. You'll want to use Reflection to access the attribute, specifically the GetCustomAttributes method.

Here's an article for reference.

Your end result may end up looking something like this:

System.Attribute[] attrs = System.Attribute.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(Person));  // Reflection.