Accessing object properties from string representations

Question

In actionscript an object's property can be accesses in this way:

object["propertyname"]

Is something like this possible in c#, without using reflection?

Answer 1

No, you have to use reflection.
If could at most create an helper extension method like in this example:

using System;

static class Utils {
    public static T GetProperty<T>(this object obj, string name) {
        var property = obj.GetType().GetProperty(name);
        if (null == property || !property.CanRead) {
            throw new ArgumentException("Invalid property name");
        }
        return (T)property.GetGetMethod().Invoke(obj, new object[] { });
    }
}

class X {
    public string A { get; set; }
    public int B { get; set; }
}

class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
        X x = new X() { A = "test", B = 3 };
        string a = x.GetProperty<string>("A");
        int b = x.GetProperty<int>("B");
    }
}

This is not good, however.
First because you are turning compile-time errors in runtime errors.
Second, the performance hit from reflection is unjustified in this case. I think that the best advice here is that you should not try to program in C# as if it was ActionScript.

Answer 2

You can define indexer in your class:

public class IndexerTest
{
    private Dicionary<string, string> keyValues = new ...

    public string this[string key]
    {
         get { return keyValues[key]; }
         set { keyValues[key] = value; }
    }
}

And use it like this:

string property = indexerTest["propertyName"];