Use an ExpandoObject instead of an anonymous type. This should allow you to cross assembly boundaries safely: public static dynamic GetPerson() { dynamic person = new ExpandoObject(); person.Name = “Foo”; person.Age = 30; return person; } In general, anonymous types should really only be used within the same method in which they are generated. Returning … Read more
From http://www.liensberger.it/web/blog/?p=191: private static bool CheckIfAnonymousType(Type type) { if (type == null) throw new ArgumentNullException(“type”); // HACK: The only way to detect anonymous types right now. return Attribute.IsDefined(type, typeof(CompilerGeneratedAttribute), false) && type.IsGenericType && type.Name.Contains(“AnonymousType”) && (type.Name.StartsWith(“<>”) || type.Name.StartsWith(“VB$”)) && type.Attributes.HasFlag(TypeAttributes.NotPublic); } EDIT: Another link with extension method: Determining whether a Type is an Anonymous Type
Anonymous type properties are read only and they cannot be set. Anonymous types provide a convenient way to encapsulate a set of read-only properties into a single object without having to explicitly define a type first. The type name is generated by the compiler and is not available at the source code level. The type … Read more
EDIT: The list below applies to C# anonymous types. VB.NET has different rules – in particular, it can generate mutable anonymous types (and does by default). Jared has pointed out in the comment that the naming style is different, too. Basically this is all pretty fragile… You can’t identify it in a generic constraint, but: … Read more
If you really want to convert the dictionary to an object that has the items of the dictionary as properties, you can use ExpandoObject: var dict = new Dictionary<string, object> { { “Property”, “foo” } }; var eo = new ExpandoObject(); var eoColl = (ICollection<KeyValuePair<string, object>>)eo; foreach (var kvp in dict) { eoColl.Add(kvp); } dynamic … Read more
I think you should make a class for this anonymous type. That’d be the most sensible thing to do in my opinion. But if you really don’t want to, you could use dynamics: public void LogEmployees (IEnumerable<dynamic> list) { foreach (dynamic item in list) { string name = item.Name; int id = item.Id; } } … Read more
Anonymous types have nothing to do with the design of systems or even at the class level. They’re a tool for developers to use when coding. I don’t even treat anonymous types as types per-se. I use them mainly as method-level anonymous tuples. If I query the database and then manipulate the results, I would … Read more
Returning it as a System.Object is the only way to return an anonymous type from a method. Unfortunately there is no other way to do this since anonymous types were designed specifically to prevent their use in this way. There are some tricks that you can do to in conjunction with returning an Object that … Read more
Make the anonymous type into a class… public class Person { public Person() { } public String Name { get; set; } public DateTime DOB { get; set; } } Person p = from person in db.People where person.Id = 1 select new Person { Name = person.Name, DOB = person.DateOfBirth }
Have a read through K. Scott Allen’s excellent post here: And Equality for All … Anonymous Types The short answer (and I quote): Turns out the C# compiler overrides Equals and GetHashCode for anonymous types. The implementation of the two overridden methods uses all the public properties on the type to compute an object’s hash … Read more