Easier access to PropertyInfo

[Marco Spatz]

Hi,

This is my first post on this mailing list as I am quite new to the c#
programming language. So please be patient ;)

I am currently developing a small framework that can connect two properties
of two objects. Therefore I create a Connection object, that gets the input
object i and the PropertyInfo of the property that should be used as input,
and an output object o and the PropertyInfo of the property that acts as
the output. A call for creating the connection currently looks like this :

graph.AddConnection(
i, i.GetType().GetProperty("Input"),
o, o.GetType().GetProperty("Output"));

This is ok, but not satisfying for me :D.
I want the user of the framework to be able to create a connection like
this:

graph.AddConnection(i.Input, o.Output);

So by calling the properties "getter method" I want to get the object the
getter method is called on and the property info the getter method has
called for.

I don't even know if this possible, but would be great ;)

Thx for your help,

Marco

[Marc Gravell]

I want the user of the framework to be able to create a connection like

this:
graph.AddConnection(i.Input, o.Output);

A few options leap to mind:
Te simplest is just a half-way house is to handle the lookup inside the
method:
graph.AddConnection(i, "Input", o, "Output");
But of course it still isn't compiler-verified.

You could do various things involving delegates and lambdas, including
treating a lambda as the missing "infoof" operator, which would allow
you to refer to a property directy (and safely), but simply: they are
all quite complicated.

That said, you are also duplicating a lot of what Binding does (at least
for the UI).

You haven't really indicated how it would be *used* (i.e. end-to-end,
not just creation), which probably counts for a lot in terms of giving
the best reply...

Marc

[Marc Gravell]

Just to warn you that this sounds *awfully* like what System.Expression
does... even if just to rule it out, you might want to see what .NET 3.5
and C# 3 bring to this...

Marc