How to loop through all the properties of a class?

Question

I have a class.

Public Class Foo
    Private _Name As String
    Public Property Name() As String
        Get
            Return _Name
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String)
            _Name = value
        End Set
    End Property

    Private _Age As String
    Public Property Age() As String
        Get
            Return _Age
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String)
            _Age = value
        End Set
    End Property

    Private _ContactNumber As String
    Public Property ContactNumber() As String
        Get
            Return _ContactNumber
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String)
            _ContactNumber = value
        End Set
    End Property


End Class

I want to loop through the properties of the above class. eg;

Public Sub DisplayAll(ByVal Someobject As Foo)
    For Each _Property As something In Someobject.Properties
        Console.WriteLine(_Property.Name & "=" & _Property.value)
    Next
End Sub

Answer 1

Use Reflection:

Type type = obj.GetType();
PropertyInfo[] properties = type.GetProperties();

foreach (PropertyInfo property in properties)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Name: " + property.Name + ", Value: " + property.GetValue(obj, null));
}

Edit: You can also specify a BindingFlags value to type.GetProperties():

BindingFlags flags = BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance;
PropertyInfo[] properties = type.GetProperties(flags);

That will restrict the returned properties to public instance properties (excluding static properties, protected properties, etc).

You don't need to specify BindingFlags.GetProperty, you use that when calling type.InvokeMember() to get the value of a property.

Answer 2

VB version of C# given by Brannon:

Public Sub DisplayAll(ByVal Someobject As Foo)
    Dim _type As Type = Someobject.GetType()
    Dim properties() As PropertyInfo = _type.GetProperties()  'line 3
    For Each _property As PropertyInfo In properties
        Console.WriteLine("Name: " + _property.Name + ", Value: " + _property.GetValue(Someobject, Nothing))
    Next
End Sub

Using Binding flags in instead of line no.3

    Dim flags As BindingFlags = BindingFlags.Public Or BindingFlags.Instance
    Dim properties() As PropertyInfo = _type.GetProperties(flags)

Answer 3

Note that if the object you are talking about has a custom property model (such as DataRowView etc for DataTable), then you need to use TypeDescriptor; the good news is that this still works fine for regular classes (and can even be much quicker than reflection):

foreach(PropertyDescriptor prop in TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(obj)) {
    Console.WriteLine("{0} = {1}", prop.Name, prop.GetValue(obj));
}

This also provides easy access to things like TypeConverter for formatting:

    string fmt = prop.Converter.ConvertToString(prop.GetValue(obj));