Safely Accessing dynamic values in C#

Question

I'm looking for ideas on better/safe way to access variables when using dynamic keyword. Most of the time

 myDto.ipaddress = item["ipaddr"];

is perfectly fine, except sometimes these values aren't defined in the json and need to accessed without throwing a Null exception.

dynamic routes_list = json_serializer.DeserializeObject(System.Web.HttpUtility.UrlDecode(data));

  for (int i = 0; i < routes_list["routes"].Length; i++)
  {
       var item = routes_list["routes"][i]


       System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary<string, object> itemDict = item;              

       // having to repeat this too often
       object snmask= string.Empty;
       itemDict.TryGetValue("snmask", out snmask);
  }

Thanks

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2839598/how-to-detect-if-a-property-exists-on-a-dynamic-object-in-c — DeveloperGuo, Mar 14 '14 at 01:10
possible duplicate of [dynamic, How to test if a property is available](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2998954/dynamic-how-to-test-if-a-property-is-available) — nawfal, Jul 19 '14 at 21:28

score -1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 14 '14 at 01:26

It is perfectly acceptable to explicitly check for the presence of the value, and only proceed if it meets your requirements.

I find it good practice to verify everything when reading data you cannot fully trust (which means most data from disk, external service, local API or user input).

Safely Accessing dynamic values in C#

1 Answers1