Creating a property setter delegate

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The Expression API supports this in .NET 4.0, but sadly the C# compiler doesn’t add any extra candy to support. But the good news is that you can trivially take a “get” expression (which the C# compiler can write) and re-write it as a “set” expression.

And even better; if you don’t have .NET 4.0, there are still at least two other ways of performing a “set” via an expression written as a “get”.

Here they all are, for info:

using System;
using System.Linq.Expressions;
using System.Reflection;
class Foo {
    public string Bar { get; set; }
    static void Main() {
        // take a "get" from C#
        Expression<Func<Foo, string>> get = foo => foo.Bar;

        // re-write in .NET 4.0 as a "set"
        var member = (MemberExpression)get.Body;
        var param = Expression.Parameter(typeof(string), "value");
        var set = Expression.Lambda<Action<Foo, string>>(
            Expression.Assign(member, param), get.Parameters[0], param);

        // compile it
        var action = set.Compile();
        var inst = new Foo();
        action(inst, "abc");
        Console.WriteLine(inst.Bar); // show it working

        //==== reflection
        MethodInfo setMethod = ((PropertyInfo)member.Member).GetSetMethod();
        setMethod.Invoke(inst, new object[] { "def" });
        Console.WriteLine(inst.Bar); // show it working

        //==== Delegate.CreateDelegate
        action = (Action<Foo, string>)
            Delegate.CreateDelegate(typeof(Action<Foo, string>), setMethod);
        action(inst, "ghi");
        Console.WriteLine(inst.Bar); // show it working
    }
}

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