Return/consume dynamic anonymous type across assembly boundaries

Question

The code below works great. If the Get and Use methods are in different assemblies, the code fails with a RuntimeBinderException. This is because t

Answer 1

The cause of the problem is that anonymous types are internal to assemblies. That's why the Dynamic Language Runtime don't allow you to access properties from another assembly.

One solution is explained in this post. You can put an custom attribute in the assembly that defines the anonymous type allowing the other assembly to access its internals.

Another solution is returning an object of a public class (with public properties). That will, of course, kill the advantages of the anonymous type.

A third solution would be using an ExpandoObject as suggested by Reed Copsey.

If you still want to use the anonymous type, you could write a dynamic class that "decorates" any anonymous type and exposes its members. Such a class would have to implement the IDynamicMetaObjectProvider interface and access the decorated object via reflection. Possibly, this stuff was already implemented by someone out there.