How to use the properties of a passed list of known objects

this might be a simple fix but I can't seem to find anything about it. I am very new to C# if it's not obvious.

I'm passing a list of objects from my main method but I haven't been able to use the properties of the objects. I want to use a property called "Asset" This is my code:

    private void GetDueDates(List<object> objects)
    {
        Type myType = objects.GetType();
        IList<PropertyInfo> props = new List<PropertyInfo>(myType.GetProperties());

        if(props.Contains(Asset)
        {
             doStuff();
        }
    }

I thought if I got the type of object then I could use the correct property but that didn't work. Do I even need to find which type it is?

Jon Skeet
people
quotationmark

Asset isn't a valid expression here, unless you've actually got a variable called Asset somewhere. You want to find out if the name of any property is Asset... and you want to do it on each object, not on the list itself:

foreach (var item in objects)
{
    var props = item.GetType().GetProperties();
    var assetProperty = props.FirstOrDefault(p => p.Name == "Asset");
    if (assetProperty != null)
    {
        var value = assetProperty.GetValue(item, null);
        // Do stuff...
    }
}

Alternatively, if you're only looking for a public property, you can pass the name to GetProperty:

foreach (var item in objects)
{
    var assetProperty = item.GetType().GetProperty("Asset");
    if (assetProperty != null)
    {
        var value = assetProperty.GetValue(item, null);
        // Do stuff...
    }
}

Having said this, it would be cleaner if you had an interface or something similar:

var assetItems = objects.OfType<IHasAsset>();
foreach (var assetItem in assetItems)
{
    var asset = assetItem.Asset;
    ...
}

people

See more on this question at Stackoverflow