Question

there must be a way

Asked by: dchau12

I am using inference to loop through an item source.  This item source could contain serveral different object types.  These objects have different attributes, but one of them remains consistent, and that is "desc".  desc is a string that represents the description of the object.

My question is, how can I  access the attribute "desc" when using inference?  So, If I knew the object was of type "dog", I could say dog.desc, and It would return "collie".  But, since the object is generic, I can't access this attribute. Please see the code below and you will see what I am talking about.

foreach (var item in dg.ItemsSource)
{             
    dg.SelectedItem = item;
    //item has the property item.desc, but I cannot directly type item.desc 
    //This is because it does not yet know what item it is dealing with in the loop.
    
    //I would like to do this:
    //string s = item.desc;
}
 
Thanks in advance.  
 
Ryan

                                  
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Asked On
2009-09-30 at 15:35:14ID24775437
Topics

C# Programming Language

,

.NET

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
11

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Answers

 

by: knowltonPosted on 2009-09-30 at 16:38:34ID: 25464731

Can you have the classes use an interface?

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
 
namespace TEST
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
 
 
           
        }
 
        private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
 
            SomeClass a = new SomeClass();
            AnotherClass b = new AnotherClass();
 
            List<IDescInterface> diffObjs = new List<IDescInterface>();
 
            diffObjs.Add(a);
            diffObjs.Add(b);
 
            foreach (IDescInterface idi in diffObjs)
            {
                string s = idi.GetDesc();
                MessageBox.Show(s);
            }
 
        }
    }
 
    public interface IDescInterface
    {
        string GetDesc();
    }
 
    public class SomeClass : IDescInterface
    {
        private int a = 0;
        private string desc = "fred";
 
        public string GetDesc()
        {
            return desc;
        }
    }
 
    public class AnotherClass : IDescInterface
    {
        private int b = 0;
        private string desc = "dino";
 
        public string GetDesc()
        {
            return desc;
        }
    }
 
}

                                              
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by: Omego2KPosted on 2009-09-30 at 18:47:46ID: 25465438

I agree with the above, Interfaces are the best solution in this case, however if you want to make it hard on yourself then you can use reflection?

 

by: dchau12Posted on 2009-09-30 at 19:10:22ID: 25465509

I thought about trying to use reflection.  Can you give an example?

 

by: Omego2KPosted on 2009-09-30 at 19:23:54ID: 25465552

OK, but I'm curious as to why you can't use an interface? Here is an example of using it with reflection

foreach (var item in dg.ItemsSource)
{            
    dg.SelectedItem = item.GetType().GetProperty("desc").GetValue(item, null);
}

If the item object doesn't have the desc property then you're going to get an exception.

 

by: dchau12Posted on 2009-09-30 at 19:54:51ID: 25465669

wow.  doesn't the reflectoin method look like a million times cleaner and easier?  Am I missing something?  I'll check it out tomorrow at work to see if works.

 

by: Omego2KPosted on 2009-09-30 at 20:03:04ID: 25465704

it looks, but it's late binding, it's slower, and from a "cleaner" standpoint it's not, as a developer I prefer the interface method as it's static. But hey it's up to you, saves development time. If you like this sort of thing then you may want to use VB.NET instead. In vb.net it would look something like this:

For Each item In dg.ItemsSource
   dg.SelectedItem = item.desc
Next

VB.NET allows you to late bind out of the box. You will notice that you don't get intellisense for the "desc" property though, but you can still write it out and run.

 

by: dchau12Posted on 2009-09-30 at 20:34:09ID: 25465798

Awesome, awesome info from both of you.  I'll split the points in the morning when I test this.

 

by: dchau12Posted on 2009-10-01 at 07:22:14ID: 31635673

Awesome advice.  Its responses like these that make EE such a valuable resource.

 

by: Omego2KPosted on 2009-10-01 at 07:29:42ID: 25469026

out of curiosity, which way did you go with?

 

by: dchau12Posted on 2009-10-01 at 07:37:28ID: 25469126

Right now I am working with reflection, but it could definitely change to programming to interfaces.  

 

by: knowltonPosted on 2009-10-01 at 09:43:03ID: 25470533

Thank you for the points.  I hope things work-out.

Interfaces was just the first thing I thought of.  I really liked Omega2K's reflection solution as well.

Perhaps it is a question of architecture vs -- just a quick and dirty (but very valid) solution to get the problem resolved.  Both have advantages.  In other words, do you see yourself running into this problem a lot?  Is this like a rare, one time thing, where you just need to get the info out, and will never be needing this again?

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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