Manually map column names with class properties

Dapper now supports custom column to property mappers. It does so through the ITypeMap interface. A CustomPropertyTypeMap class is provided by Dapper that can do most of this work. For example:

Dapper.SqlMapper.SetTypeMap(
    typeof(TModel),
    new CustomPropertyTypeMap(
        typeof(TModel),
        (type, columnName) =>
            type.GetProperties().FirstOrDefault(prop =>
                prop.GetCustomAttributes(false)
                    .OfType<ColumnAttribute>()
                    .Any(attr => attr.Name == columnName))));

And the model:

public class TModel {
    [Column(Name="my_property")]
    public int MyProperty { get; set; }
}

It’s important to note that the implementation of CustomPropertyTypeMap requires that the attribute exist and match one of the column names or the property won’t be mapped. The DefaultTypeMap class provides the standard functionality and can be leveraged to change this behavior:

public class FallbackTypeMapper : SqlMapper.ITypeMap
{
    private readonly IEnumerable<SqlMapper.ITypeMap> _mappers;

    public FallbackTypeMapper(IEnumerable<SqlMapper.ITypeMap> mappers)
    {
        _mappers = mappers;
    }

    public SqlMapper.IMemberMap GetMember(string columnName)
    {
        foreach (var mapper in _mappers)
        {
            try
            {
                var result = mapper.GetMember(columnName);
                if (result != null)
                {
                    return result;
                }
            }
            catch (NotImplementedException nix)
            {
            // the CustomPropertyTypeMap only supports a no-args
            // constructor and throws a not implemented exception.
            // to work around that, catch and ignore.
            }
        }
        return null;
    }
    // implement other interface methods similarly

    // required sometime after version 1.13 of dapper
    public ConstructorInfo FindExplicitConstructor()
    {
        return _mappers
            .Select(mapper => mapper.FindExplicitConstructor())
            .FirstOrDefault(result => result != null);
    }
}

And with that in place, it becomes easy to create a custom type mapper that will automatically use the attributes if they’re present but will otherwise fall back to standard behavior:

public class ColumnAttributeTypeMapper<T> : FallbackTypeMapper
{
    public ColumnAttributeTypeMapper()
        : base(new SqlMapper.ITypeMap[]
            {
                new CustomPropertyTypeMap(
                   typeof(T),
                   (type, columnName) =>
                       type.GetProperties().FirstOrDefault(prop =>
                           prop.GetCustomAttributes(false)
                               .OfType<ColumnAttribute>()
                               .Any(attr => attr.Name == columnName)
                           )
                   ),
                new DefaultTypeMap(typeof(T))
            })
    {
    }
}

That means we can now easily support types that require map using attributes:

Dapper.SqlMapper.SetTypeMap(
    typeof(MyModel),
    new ColumnAttributeTypeMapper<MyModel>());

Here’s a Gist to the full source code.