c# question in Reflection(please help)

[lamoureternal]

I'm using reflections to dynamically build an enum type from xml values. the xml looks like..

<Students>
        <Student>
            <Name>John</Name>
            </Student>
        <Student>
            <Name>Smith</Name>
         </Student>
 </Students>

-----
I want to declare a property from the reflected type. in other words I want to have the "Profile provider" behaviour when aquiring profile properties, a list of enumerated values appears as I add them to the web.config

I want to have my enum list like this

Students.John
----------.Smith

------------------------------- <CODE> -----------------------------------

public static Type StudentTypes
    {
             get 
             {
                 AppDomain currentDomain = AppDomain.CurrentDomain;
                 AssemblyName aName = new AssemblyName("TempAssembly");
                 AssemblyBuilder ab = currentDomain.DefineDynamicAssembly(aName, AssemblyBuilderAccess.RunAndSave);
                 ModuleBuilder mb = ab.DefineDynamicModule(aName.Name, aName.Name + ".dll");
                 EnumBuilder eb = mb.DefineEnum("StdType", TypeAttributes.Public, typeof(int));
 
 
                 XmlDocument xml = new XmlDocument();
                 xml.Load(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~") + ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AdvertisesConfiguration"]);
 
                 XmlNodeList xnList = xml.SelectNodes("/Students/Student");
                 int i = 0;
                 foreach (XmlNode xn in xnList)
                 {
                     eb.DefineLiteral(xn["Name"].InnerText, i++);
                 }
                 Type finished = eb.CreateType();
                 return finished; 
             }
         }

------------------------------- </CODE> -----------------------------------


------- thank you

[lamoureternal]

now I have dynamically constructed an enum type. is there any way I can declare a variable/property using this type. so I can expose its inner members to the declared variable/property??

[Plater]

@lamoureternal
Not in the same way as if the enum had been coded in at design time. You will have to use reflection for everything

[balabaster]

@Plater
Is there a way of having reflection build the enum at design time, in a similar fashion to the way that member attributes such as [Extension()] tell the Visual Studio compiler to build an enum?

It seems to me that inside Visual Studio this is done somewhere... all that would be happening is that the enum is defined in an XML doc rather than in a CS/VB document...

That said, I have no clue how I would go about this, I would have to have a play to figure it out. I've come across need to do this in the past where large enums are far easier to manage and synchronize from the database than they are from the application, i.e. you don't want to be reporting on magic numbers and exporting an enum to the database every time you change it can be a pain too. It's far easier if the enum is built on the fly from the database and all references in the application are updated on the fly.

How you would get around that without a recompile is beyond me though...seems like it might be more of a headache in reality than it is in theory...

[lamoureternal]

I couldn't agree more balabaster, that's exactely what drived me at the first place to go that way.

I know it's possible. actually the Profile provider's using it, when you define properties through the web.config they appears as static members of the Profile collection (at design time).

so. it's close :)

[Plater]

When you define values in the web.config, an implicit re-compile occurs, creating the class structures.
What if you had roughly a Dictionary<string, int> where the string portion is the key and contains your enum names and the int portion contains your values.
You can create that object from reflection