Get display annotation value on mvc3 server side code

Question

Is there a way to get the value of an annotation in server side code? For example, I have:

public class Dummy
{
    [Display(Name = \"Foo\")]
    public stri         


        

Answer 1

Something like this?

string displayName = GetDisplayName((Dummy x) => x.foo);

// ...

public static string GetDisplayName(Expression> exp)
{
    var me = exp.Body as MemberExpression;
    if (me == null)
        throw new ArgumentException("Must be a MemberExpression.", "exp");

    var attr = me.Member
                 .GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DisplayAttribute), false)
                 .Cast()
                 .SingleOrDefault();

    return (attr != null) ? attr.Name : me.Member.Name;
}

Or, if you want to be able to call the method against an instance and take advantage of type inference:

var dummy = new Dummy();
string displayName = dummy.GetDisplayName(x => x.foo);

// ...

public static string GetDisplayName(this T src, Expression> exp)
{
    var me = exp.Body as MemberExpression;
    if (me == null)
        throw new ArgumentException("Must be a MemberExpression.", "exp");

    var attr = me.Member
                 .GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DisplayAttribute), false)
                 .Cast()
                 .SingleOrDefault();

    return (attr != null) ? attr.Name : me.Member.Name;
}