Linq expressions and extension methods to get property name

Question

I was looking at this post that describes a simple way to do databinding between POCO properties: Data Binding POCO Properties

One of the comments by Bevan included a simple Binder class that can be used to accomplish such data binding. It works great for what I need but I would like to implement some of the suggestions that Bevan made to improve the class, namely:

• Checking that source and target are assigned
• Checking that the properties identified by sourcePropertyName and targetPropertyName exist
• Checking for type compatibility between the two properties

Also, given that specifying properties by string is error prone, you could use Linq expressions and extension methods instead. Then instead of writing

Binder.Bind( source, "Name", target, "Name")

you could write

source.Bind( Name => target.Name);

I'm pretty sure I can handle the first three (though feel free to include those changes) but I have no clue how to use Linq expressions and extension methods to be able to write code without using property name strings.

Any tips?

Here is the original code as found in the link:

public static class Binder
{

    public static void Bind(
        INotifyPropertyChanged source,
        string sourcePropertyName,
        INotifyPropertyChanged target,
        string targetPropertyName)
    {
        var sourceProperty
            = source.GetType().GetProperty(sourcePropertyName);
        var targetProperty
            = target.GetType().GetProperty(targetPropertyName);

        source.PropertyChanged +=
            (s, a) =>
            {
                var sourceValue = sourceProperty.GetValue(source, null);
                var targetValue = targetProperty.GetValue(target, null);
                if (!Object.Equals(sourceValue, targetValue))
                {
                    targetProperty.SetValue(target, sourceValue, null);
                }
            };

        target.PropertyChanged +=
            (s, a) =>
            {
                var sourceValue = sourceProperty.GetValue(source, null);
                var targetValue = targetProperty.GetValue(target, null);
                if (!Object.Equals(sourceValue, targetValue))
                {
                    sourceProperty.SetValue(source, targetValue, null);
                }
            };
    }
}

Answer 1

The following will return a property name as a string from a lambda expression:

public string PropertyName<TProperty>(Expression<Func<TProperty>> property)
{
  var lambda = (LambdaExpression)property;

  MemberExpression memberExpression;
  if (lambda.Body is UnaryExpression)
  {
    var unaryExpression = (UnaryExpression)lambda.Body;
    memberExpression = (MemberExpression)unaryExpression.Operand;
  }
  else
  {
    memberExpression = (MemberExpression)lambda.Body;
  }

  return memberExpression.Member.Name;
}

Usage:

public class MyClass
{
  public int World { get; set; }
}

...
var c = new MyClass();
Console.WriteLine("Hello {0}", PropertyName(() => c.World));

UPDATE

public static class Extensions
{
    public static void Bind<TSourceProperty, TDestinationProperty>(this INotifyPropertyChanged source, Expression<Func<TSourceProperty, TDestinationProperty>> bindExpression)
    {
        var expressionDetails = GetExpressionDetails<TSourceProperty, TDestinationProperty>(bindExpression);
        var sourcePropertyName = expressionDetails.Item1;
        var destinationObject = expressionDetails.Item2;
        var destinationPropertyName = expressionDetails.Item3;

        // Do binding here
        Console.WriteLine("{0} {1}", sourcePropertyName, destinationPropertyName);
    }

    private static Tuple<string, INotifyPropertyChanged, string> GetExpressionDetails<TSourceProperty, TDestinationProperty>(Expression<Func<TSourceProperty, TDestinationProperty>> bindExpression)
    {
        var lambda = (LambdaExpression)bindExpression;

        ParameterExpression sourceExpression = lambda.Parameters.FirstOrDefault();
        MemberExpression destinationExpression = (MemberExpression)lambda.Body;

        var memberExpression = destinationExpression.Expression as MemberExpression;
        var constantExpression = memberExpression.Expression as ConstantExpression;
        var fieldInfo = memberExpression.Member as FieldInfo;
        var destinationObject = fieldInfo.GetValue(constantExpression.Value) as INotifyPropertyChanged;

        return new Tuple<string, INotifyPropertyChanged, string>(sourceExpression.Name, destinationObject, destinationExpression.Member.Name);
    }
}

Usage:

public class TestSource : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
    public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;

    public string Name { get; set; }        
}

public class TestDestination : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
    public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;

    public string Id { get; set; }    
}

class Program
{        
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var x = new TestSource();
        var y = new TestDestination();

        x.Bind<string, string>(Name => y.Id);
    }    
}