Reflection?

"Faraw" <betemariam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:39919c76$1@news.dev-archive.com...
>
> Please tell me what reflection means.

AIUI: You can dynamically at run time get various information about the
classes, not only your own, and do everything from checking attributes to
get a list of all the methods (simply get all the information the run-time
has about the classes, granted you're code is trusted to do that).

/Carl

"Carl Nettelblad" <cnettel@hem.passagen.se> wrote in message
news:3991ab0d@news.dev-archive.com...
>
> "Faraw" <betemariam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:39919c76$1@news.dev-archive.com...
> >
> > Please tell me what reflection means.
>
> AIUI: You can dynamically at run time get various information about the
> classes, not only your own, and do everything from checking attributes to
> get a list of all the methods (simply get all the information the run-time
> has about the classes, granted you're code is trusted to do that).

You can also do things like creating instances of objects and calling
functions on them, in a late-bound fashion.

I suspect C# attributes are seperate from reflection.

As far as I know, C# attributes allow you to quickly persist an object and
all it's attributes into XML format. Something I've been looking forward
to, since I keep having to manually do it in java :/

--
-
Thong Nguyen
http://tummy.veridicus.com

"Oscar" <consulBanana@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:39921ebc$1@news.dev-archive.com...
> What is the relationship between Reflection and Attributes? I still need
to
> study the little blurb on attributes more closely, but on first read, I
get
> the impression that Reflection is a property of languages in general, and
C#
> attributes are how you get at Reflection in the case of C#. Am I close?
>
> "Eric Gunnerson" <ericgu@nospam.microsoft.nospam.com> wrote in message
> news:3991aff9@news.dev-archive.com...
> > "Carl Nettelblad" <cnettel@hem.passagen.se> wrote in message
> > news:3991ab0d@news.dev-archive.com...
> > >
> > > "Faraw" <betemariam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > > news:39919c76$1@news.dev-archive.com...
> > > >
> > > > Please tell me what reflection means.
> > >
> > > AIUI: You can dynamically at run time get various information about
the
> > > classes, not only your own, and do everything from checking attributes
> to
> > > get a list of all the methods (simply get all the information the
> run-time
> > > has about the classes, granted you're code is trusted to do that).
> >
> > You can also do things like creating instances of objects and calling
> > functions on them, in a late-bound fashion.
> >
> >
>
>

Thanks to both of you. I think that makes things a lot clearer

"Eric Gunnerson" <ericgu@nospam.microsoft.nospam.com> wrote in message
news:3992e100$1@news.dev-archive.com...
> Reflection is a service of the runtime. You can walk up to an assembly or
> type, find out about the types and methods it contains, create instances
of
> them, call functions on them, etc.
>
> Attributes are a way of putting information with the metadata of an
> assembly, type (class/struct/enum), member, parameter, or some other
entity.
> This information can then be queried using reflection; once you have the
> type object for something, you can find out the attributes that are
applied
> to it.
>
> For example, if I have an attribute class like this:
>
> public class HelpUrlAttribute : System.Attribute
> {
> public HelpUrlAttribute(string url) { . }
> public string Url { get {.} }
> }
>
> I can then use it like this:
>
> [HelpUrl("http://SomeUrl/MyClass")]
> class MyClass {}
>
> and query it at runtime with the reflection:
>
> Type type = typeof(MyClass);
> foreach(object attr in type.GetCustomAttributes() )
> {
> if ( attr is HelpUrlAttribute )
> {
> HelpUrlAttribute ha = (HelpUrlAttribute) attr;
> myBrowser.Navigate( ha.Url );
> }
> }
>
> Does that help?
>
> "Oscar" <consulBanana@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:39921ebc$1@news.dev-archive.com...
> > What is the relationship between Reflection and Attributes? I still
need
> to
> > study the little blurb on attributes more closely, but on first read, I
> get
> > the impression that Reflection is a property of languages in general,
and
> C#
> > attributes are how you get at Reflection in the case of C#. Am I close?
> >
> > "Eric Gunnerson" <ericgu@nospam.microsoft.nospam.com> wrote in message
> > news:3991aff9@news.dev-archive.com...
> > > "Carl Nettelblad" <cnettel@hem.passagen.se> wrote in message
> > > news:3991ab0d@news.dev-archive.com...
> > > >
> > > > "Faraw" <betemariam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > > > news:39919c76$1@news.dev-archive.com...
> > > > >
> > > > > Please tell me what reflection means.
> > > >
> > > > AIUI: You can dynamically at run time get various information about
> the
> > > > classes, not only your own, and do everything from checking
attributes
> > to
> > > > get a list of all the methods (simply get all the information the
> > run-time
> > > > has about the classes, granted you're code is trusted to do that).
> > >
> > > You can also do things like creating instances of objects and calling
> > > functions on them, in a late-bound fashion.
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>
>