DotNetKicks.com - Stories tagged with Reflection

Using Generics to Copy Data Between Classes of Different Types

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:44:41 GMT

The latest in a series of posts exploring how we can reduce the grunt work in copying data between the data layer classes and the user interface classes. This uses a fluent interface to copy all of the data in one line of code rather than property by property.

Method to Copy Data Between Objects of Different Types

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:37:30 GMT

One thing that I find tiresome when using the various Model/View patterns is the constant copying of data between the model and the view. This is the first post in a series on a possible easier way to do this. In this post I write a method that copies the data from one interface to another based on the names and types of the properties. Over the next few posts, I will extend the code to use generics and extension methods.

Stuff in Reflection that's not in Metadata

Fri, 23 May 2008 16:09:16 GMT

Previously, I mentioned some things in Metadata that aren't exposed in Reflection. Here's an opposite case. While metadata represents static bits on disk, Reflection operates in a live process with access to the CLR's loader. So reflection can represent things the CLR loader and type system may do that aren't captured in the metadata.

Searching for derived types in an assembly

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:46:02 GMT

Sometimes we need to find all classes or interfaces that derive a certain Type. There are several possible scenarios for this kind of search - For instance, if we are trying to load a plug-in assembly at runtime and wish to initialize all the classes that implement the IPluginBase interface. Using the suggested DerivedHelper makes it a lot easier.

Mono.Cecil vs. System.Reflection

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:09:33 GMT

Patrick wrote a great post comparing Mono's Cecil against the built-in System.Reflection.

Simple JavaScript Object Reflection API (.NET Style)

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 01:21:43 GMT

I was thinking about how JavaScript JSON serializers go about serializing objects. But how does the serializer know about each of the objects properties? I figured JavaScript must have some method of object reflection (similar to .NET Reflection) and it does. Here's a simple Reflection namespace that allows you to more easily reflect through an objects methods and properties:

Reflecting on reflection

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:00:30 GMT

Some weeks ago I was working on a project where we receive some ten or twenty different message types from a server, and they all need to be handled when they arrive. Of course, we want to use event driven programming to make this happen on the fly, instead of polling all the time. All of the messages have the header in common, so we already made a abstract parent class called Message, and when it came to handling all the different messages, we wanted to write as little code as possible. So we added an abstract method called HandleResponse to the code. So the idea was to identify the incoming message type and invoke the HandleResponse using reflection on the object that we had identified this as. To do this, we made a little xml file that contains the message code (A-Z) along with the name and reference to the class linked to the message type. When the program starts, it reads the xml into a dictionary, so we can look up the key (message code) and get the class reference in return. XDocument descriptorsXml = XDocument.Load( @".\Data\MessageDescriptors.xml"); var descQuery = from desc in descriptorsXml.Descendants("Message") select new MessageDescriptor { Code = desc.Element("Code").Value, Name = desc.Element("Name").Value, ObjectType = desc.Element("ObjectType").Value.ToType() , IsServerMessage = Convert.ToBoolean( desc.Element("IsServerMessage").Value ) }; foreach (MessageDescriptor m in descQuery) { descriptors.Add(m.Code, m); } Then, we have a MessageHandlingFactory that simply gets objects in from a queue, identifies the type, and invokes the HandleResponse. If the object isn't recognized (could be a new message type, or could be that the programmer forgot to insert the description in the XML file), the MessageHandlingFactory can either throw an exception, or better yet, return a string with message that tells the user what went wrong. If everything goes as planned, it returns a string with the identified typename. object theType = Activator.CreateInstance(t, SessionID); EventInfo eInfo = t.GetEvent("OnWriteEvent"); Message.WriteEventHandler theHandler = new Message.WriteEventHandler(OnWriteEventHandler); eInfo.AddEventHandler(theType, theHandler); theType.GetType().GetMethod("HandleResponse").Invoke(theType, new object[] { message }); return "MessageHandler: " + messageType; That's all, folks! Update February 13, 2008: The code has now been tested in a very high throughput environment, and it performs

How To build a lightweight, flexible logging component in C#

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:00:27 GMT

How To build a lightweight, flexible logging component in C#

How to tell if a .NET Assembly is debug or release

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:31:02 GMT

Explains how to tell if a .NET Assembly is built for debug or release by using .NET Reflector and programmatically using System.Reflection.

Reflection performance put in perspective

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:01:02 GMT

The web framework I built over the last few years, ProMesh.NET, relies on reflection for a lot of the features it offers. Often though, I am asked if the heave use of reflection doesn't have a significant impact on performance. My answer usually is: YES, but it doesn't matter. Now you probably think that I don't care about performance or that I've had too much too drink. None of the above. I'll explain:

Image reflection

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:01:03 GMT

Glass like image reflection on the fly with javascript

C# 2.0: Arity - ever heard of it?

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 23:46:01 GMT

Arity is the number of arguments that a method takes. If you ever used reflection and CodeDOM, this is a good thing to know of.

Dot Net Project: System.Reflection - FieldInfo class

Wed, 30 May 2007 11:58:23 GMT

A FieldInfo class provides detailed information about a single field of a class or an interface.

100% Reflective Class Diagram Creation Tool

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 08:46:01 GMT

This article is about using reflection. For those of you that don't know what reflection is, it is the ability to obtain information about a Type of object without really knowing anything about the object type that is being dealt with. For example one could simply ask the current Type of object if it supports a certain method name, if it does, the method can be called. This may sound strange but it is a very powerful technique. Lets suppose that I simply want to look at what methods a class supports, well that is also easily achieved using reflection. .NET allows developers to leverage reflection in many ways.

Reflectionesque behavior in JavaScript

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:44:52 GMT

A description of the reflection-like behavior of JavaScript

Reflectionesque behavior in JavaScript

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:44:52 GMT

A description of the reflection-like behavior of JavaScript

The Strategy Pattern and Reflection

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 04:16:01 GMT

Using the Strategy Pattern and Reflection I easily created a Pluggable application.

How To Use Reflection To Compare Two Objects

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 14:05:50 GMT

A code snippet which you can use to compare two objects (of the same type) to determine if they are equal.

How to: Execute (another's class) private methods

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 05:01:04 GMT

Do you need to get access to a method that has been marked as private? here's how you can

The Power of "View Source"

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 11:01:01 GMT

Jeff Atwood explains why view source has helped make Javascript so popular, and why Reflector can do the same for .NET

Determining which method called me...

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 00:31:01 GMT

Using the stack trace to find out the caller.

Strongly-Typed Reflection

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 08:21:01 GMT

Ayende Rahien presents a solution for strongly-typed reflection. - "I refactor a lot, and I just hate it when everything compiles okay, and then things breaks on runtime. I think that static reflection will enable writing amazing code. The functionality is already built into the CLR (check the ldtoken/ldftn IL instructions and friends). It didn't make it into the 2.0 release, but I hope that it will be in the next release. In the meantime, the 2.0 Reflection has been optimized, so that is what we have for now. But it's not enough for me. ..."

Attributes and Reflection in C#

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 07:57:00 GMT

This article discusses attributes and reflection concepts in detail with examples wherever necessary. C# is very important language, but it also offers scope for adding declarative features to the code and their later retrieval if necessary. We can use attributes to provide both design-level and run-time information to our code. Attributes are a mechanism for adding metadata. Reflection is the process by which a program can read its own metadata.