How to create an anonymous type using codedom

Question

Essentially I am aiming to get something like the following code as output from my codedom:

var foo = new { variable1 = "value", variable2 = 5 };

I won't just be using it for a variable assignment but I wanted a simple example of how to create an anonymous type. I'm not sure that this exact code is possible to achieve but if there's some kind of work around you could point me in the direction of I would be much obliged.

I've had a look at the CodeObjectCreateExpression and I don't think that's going to do what I'm looking for and I can't find anything else that comes close.

Thanks in advance for all and any help.

why not play around dynamic types? Example: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3740021/how-to-dynamic-new-anonymous-class — Innat3, Nov 11 '16 at 11:19
CodeDom is a thing from the past. It has never really followed .NET (read "C#") evolutions. Microsoft has put all efforts on Roslyn instead. The only solution is to use CodeDom snippets — Simon Mourier, Nov 11 '16 at 11:21
@Innat3 I've seen that ExpandoObject around, fairly new ish to C# and haven't used dynamics much before, is that an alternative I could maybe use? How would I go about it? — abarnybox, Nov 11 '16 at 11:23
You cannot return anonymous type, for example, from method. So, you should use `System.Tuple` or `dynamic` types. — Alexander Petrov, Nov 11 '16 at 11:28

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 11 '16 at 11:46

2

CodeDOM attempts to be language-neutral and hasn't been updated for a very long time, so I don't think you can use any of its built-in types to do this. But you can use CodeSnippetExpression to inject this code as string:

var expression = new CodeSnippetExpression("new { variable1 = \"value\", variable2 = 5 }");
var statement = new CodeVariableDeclarationStatement("var", "foo", expression);

answered Nov 11 '16 at 11:46

svick

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That'll do for the case I've got, didn't know you could do that! Thanks – abarnybox Nov 11 '16 at 11:49

How to create an anonymous type using codedom

1 Answers1