Reflection - get attribute name and value on prope

Question

I have a class, lets call it Book with a property called Name. With that property, I have an attribute associated with it.

public class Book
{
    [Author("AuthorName")]
    public string Name
    {
        get; private set; 
    }
}

In my main method, I'm using reflection and wish to get key value pair of each attribute for each property. So in this example, I'd expect to see "Author" for attribute name and "AuthorName" for the attribute value.

Question: How do I get the attribute name and value on my properties using Reflection?

Answer 1

If you just want one specific Attribute value For instance Display Attribute you can use the following code:

var pInfo = typeof(Book).GetProperty("Name")
                             .GetCustomAttribute<DisplayAttribute>();
var name = pInfo.Name;

Answer 2

private static Dictionary<string, string> GetAuthors()
{
    return typeof(Book).GetProperties()
        .SelectMany(prop => prop.GetCustomAttributes())
        .OfType<AuthorAttribute>()
        .ToDictionary(attribute => attribute.Name, attribute => attribute.Name);
}

Answer 3

You can use GetCustomAttributesData() and GetCustomAttributes():

var attributeData = typeof(Book).GetProperty("Name").GetCustomAttributesData();
var attributes = typeof(Book).GetProperty("Name").GetCustomAttributes(false);

Answer 4

Here are some static methods you can use to get the MaxLength, or any other attribute.

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Reflection;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;
using System.Linq.Expressions;

public static class AttributeHelpers {

public static Int32 GetMaxLength<T>(Expression<Func<T,string>> propertyExpression) {
    return GetPropertyAttributeValue<T,string,MaxLengthAttribute,Int32>(propertyExpression,attr => attr.Length);
}

//Optional Extension method
public static Int32 GetMaxLength<T>(this T instance,Expression<Func<T,string>> propertyExpression) {
    return GetMaxLength<T>(propertyExpression);
}


//Required generic method to get any property attribute from any class
public static TValue GetPropertyAttributeValue<T, TOut, TAttribute, TValue>(Expression<Func<T,TOut>> propertyExpression,Func<TAttribute,TValue> valueSelector) where TAttribute : Attribute {
    var expression = (MemberExpression)propertyExpression.Body;
    var propertyInfo = (PropertyInfo)expression.Member;
    var attr = propertyInfo.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(TAttribute),true).FirstOrDefault() as TAttribute;

    if (attr==null) {
        throw new MissingMemberException(typeof(T).Name+"."+propertyInfo.Name,typeof(TAttribute).Name);
    }

    return valueSelector(attr);
}

}

Using the static method...

var length = AttributeHelpers.GetMaxLength<Player>(x => x.PlayerName);

Or using the optional extension method on an instance...

var player = new Player();
var length = player.GetMaxLength(x => x.PlayerName);

Or using the full static method for any other attribute (StringLength for example)...

var length = AttributeHelpers.GetPropertyAttributeValue<Player,string,StringLengthAttribute,Int32>(prop => prop.PlayerName,attr => attr.MaximumLength);

Inspired by the Mikael Engver's answer.

Answer 5

to get attribute from enum, i'm using :

 public enum ExceptionCodes
 {
  [ExceptionCode(1000)]
  InternalError,
 }

 public static (int code, string message) Translate(ExceptionCodes code)
        {
            return code.GetType()
            .GetField(Enum.GetName(typeof(ExceptionCodes), code))
            .GetCustomAttributes(false).Where((attr) =>
            {
                return (attr is ExceptionCodeAttribute);
            }).Select(customAttr =>
            {
                var attr = (customAttr as ExceptionCodeAttribute);
                return (attr.Code, attr.FriendlyMessage);
            }).FirstOrDefault();
        }

// Using

 var _message = Translate(code);

Answer 6

I have solved similar problems by writing a Generic Extension Property Attribute Helper:

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Linq.Expressions;
using System.Reflection;

public static class AttributeHelper
{
    public static TValue GetPropertyAttributeValue<T, TOut, TAttribute, TValue>(
        Expression<Func<T, TOut>> propertyExpression, 
        Func<TAttribute, TValue> valueSelector) 
        where TAttribute : Attribute
    {
        var expression = (MemberExpression) propertyExpression.Body;
        var propertyInfo = (PropertyInfo) expression.Member;
        var attr = propertyInfo.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(TAttribute), true).FirstOrDefault() as TAttribute;
        return attr != null ? valueSelector(attr) : default(TValue);
    }
}

Usage:

var author = AttributeHelper.GetPropertyAttributeValue<Book, string, AuthorAttribute, string>(prop => prop.Name, attr => attr.Author);
// author = "AuthorName"