Reflection 02 Binding flags

To get member data using reflection you have to remember to match all binding flags, if a property is instance and public, but you only request public or instance it will not show up.

using System;

using System.Diagnostics;

using System.Reflection;

using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace pc.reflection01

{

    [DebuggerDisplay("{DebuggerDisplay()}")]

    class Person

    {

        static int _runningId = 0;

        public int Id { get; } = _runningId++;

        public string FirstName { get; set; }

        public string LastName { get; set; }

        public DateTime Birthdate { get; set; }

        public Person() { }

        public Person(string FirstName, string LastName)

            : this()

        {

            this.FirstName = FirstName;

            this.LastName = LastName;

        }

        public Person(string FirstName, string LastName, DateTime Birthdate)

            : this(FirstName, LastName)

        {

            this.Birthdate = Birthdate;

        }

        public int GetAge()

        {

            if (Birthdate == new DateTime())

                return -1;

            var today = DateTime.Now;

            var age = today.AddYears(-Birthdate.Year).Year;

            return Birthdate.AddYears(age) > today ? --age : age;

        }

        private string DebuggerDisplay()

        {

            var age = GetAge();

            var result = $"{FirstName} {LastName}";

            return age > -1 ? $"{result} is {age}" : result;

        }

    }

    class Program

    {

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            IEnumerable<MemberInfo> members =

                     typeof(Person).GetMembers( BindingFlags.NonPublic |

                                                BindingFlags.Static |

                                                BindingFlags.GetField);

            foreach (MemberInfo mi in members)

                Console.WriteLine(mi.Name);

        }

    }

}

for example by default when inspecting members of a class you private static fields will not be exposed, so you have to specify to see them.

Now reflection is pretty cool and there's way more of it than i want to get into, nor am i an expert in refection however i do think it's valuable to share the only time i've used refection in the real world. and that's for testing, namely testing private functions.