Get properties of a given type in C#

This article shows how we can find all properties with a given property type. The provided code also can find private properties or look for nullable of the property type. E.g. find all DateTime properties and also include all properties which are Nullable of DateTime, Nullable. An extension method for this looks like the following (put the method into a static class as it is an extension method) :

  

  
          /// <summary>
        /// Retrieves a list of properties (property info) with given type <paramref name="propertyType"/> in a nested object
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="rootObject"></param>
        /// <param name="propertyType"></param>
        /// <param name="includePrivateProperties">If set to true, includes private properties</param>
        /// <param name="includeNullableVariant">If set to true, return also propertie which are the nullable variant of the <paramref name="propertyType"/>.</param>
        /// <returns>A list of properties with given <paramref name="propertyType"/>, possibly including also non-nullable variant of the type and both public and private properties set with the parameters <paramref name="includePrivateProperties"/> and <paramref name="includeNullableVariant"/></returns>
        public static IEnumerable<PropertyInfo> GetPropertiesOfType(this object rootObject, Type propertyType,
            bool includePrivateProperties = false, bool includeNullableVariant = false)
        {
            if (rootObject == null)
            {
                yield return null;
            }
            var bindingFlagsFilter = !includePrivateProperties ? BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance : BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance;
            var propertiesOfType = rootObject.GetType().GetProperties(bindingFlagsFilter)
                .Where(p => p.PropertyType == propertyType || (includeNullableVariant && propertyType == Nullable.GetUnderlyingType(p.PropertyType)))
                .ToList();
            foreach (var prop in propertiesOfType)
            {
                yield return prop;
            }
            var nestableProperties = rootObject.GetType().GetProperties(bindingFlagsFilter)
              .Where(p => p.PropertyType.IsClass && p.PropertyType != typeof(string))
              .ToList(); //ignoring properties of type strings as they are not nested, though a class
            foreach (var prop in nestableProperties)
            {
                if (prop.GetIndexParameters().Length > 0)
                {
                    continue; //skip indexer properties 
                }
                var rootObjectLevel = prop.GetValue(rootObject, null);
                if (rootObjectLevel == null)
                {
                    continue;
                }
                foreach (var propertyAtLevel in GetPropertiesOfType(rootObjectLevel, propertyType, includePrivateProperties, includeNullableVariant))
                {
                    yield return propertyAtLevel;
                }
            }
        }

We find the properties matching the property type and then recursively fetch such properties at nested levels too if the property is a class and therefore can contain sub properties. We end up with all the properties of a given type. As we see, we adjust the binding flags to include private properties too or not. And we use the Nullable.GetUnderlyingType method to match the underlying type in case we want to look for DateTime and DateTime? properties. This method is fairly fast, in the order of a few milliseconds (1-5 when I tested for an ordinary two level nested object.) But we are using reflection here and the method could be faster if we made use of some other techniques, perhaps with
IL 'magic'. I have not found a way to do this yet though.. Here is another utility method (extension method) for finding 'property paths'. This is handly if you want to craft an SQL select statement for example as we need the fully qualified path perhaps if our tooling creates fields in the database similar to POCO object
and the nested object is similar to table structure. Maybe your nested properties are mapped to SomeInnerTable1_SomeField1 and so on. Anyways, it is handly to have 'property paths' to the properties to get a fast overview of where the properties are located in the nested structure of your (possibly complex) object.

         /// <summary>
        /// This method looks for properties of given type in a nested object (e.g. a form data contract) 
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="rootObject"></param>
        /// <param name="propertyType"></param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        private IEnumerable<string> GetPropertyPathsForType(object rootObject, Type propertyType, string prefixAtLevel = "")
        {
            if (rootObject == null)
            {
                yield return string.Empty;
            }
            var propertiesOfType = rootObject.GetType().GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance)
                .Where(p => p.PropertyType == propertyType)
                .ToList();

            foreach (var prop in propertiesOfType)
            {
                if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(prefixAtLevel))
                {
                    yield return prop.Name; //root properties have no prefix 
                }
                else
                {
                    yield return prefixAtLevel.TrimStart('.') + "." + prop.Name;
                }
            }

            var nestableProperties = rootObject.GetType().GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.Instance)
              .Where(p => p.PropertyType.IsClass && p.PropertyType != typeof(string))
              .ToList(); //ignoring properties of type strings as they are not nested, though a class

            foreach (var prop in nestableProperties)
            {
                if (prop.GetIndexParameters().Length > 0)
                {
                    continue; //skip indexer properties - this is identified as required 
                }
                var rootObjectLevel = prop.GetValue(rootObject, null);
                if (rootObjectLevel == null)
                {
                    continue;
                }
                foreach (var propertyAtLevel in GetPropertyPathsForType(rootObjectLevel, propertyType, prefixAtLevel + "." + prop.Name))
                {
                    yield return propertyAtLevel.TrimStart('.').TrimEnd('.');
                }
            }
        }

The code above could use the first method more to support including public and private properties, but I leave it out 'as an exercise to the reader' as text books often states. So this code is very handy if you for example at work need to find 'all the datetime properties in a domain object' and similar cases. Maybe you want to deny all datetimes have a future datetime in case it is a report for a patient treatment report being performed yesterday and so on, and for
that particular model, there will be no future date time values.

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