In c# convert anonymous type into key/value array?

Question

I have the following anonymous type:

new {data1 = \"test1\", data2 = \"sam\", data3 = \"bob\"}

I need a method that will take this in, and

Answer 1

@kbrimington's solution makes a nice extension method - my my case returning a HtmlString

    public static System.Web.HtmlString ToHTMLAttributeString(this Object attributes)
    {
        var props = attributes.GetType().GetProperties();
        var pairs = props.Select(x => string.Format(@"{0}=""{1}""",x.Name,x.GetValue(attributes, null))).ToArray();
        return new HtmlString(string.Join(" ", pairs));
    }

I'm using it to drop arbitrary attributes into a Razor MVC view. I started with code using RouteValueDictionary and looping on the results but this is much neater.

Answer 2

using Newtonsoft.Json;
var data = new {data1 = "test1", data2 = "sam", data3 = "bob"};
var encodedData = new FormUrlEncodedContent(JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Dictionary<string, string>>(JsonConvert.SerializeObject(data))

Answer 3

I did something like this:

public class ObjectDictionary : Dictionary<string, object>
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Construct.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="a_source">Source object.</param>
    public ObjectDictionary(object a_source)
        : base(ParseObject(a_source))
    {

    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Create a dictionary from the given object (<paramref name="a_source"/>).
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="a_source">Source object.</param>
    /// <returns>Created dictionary.</returns>
    /// <exception cref="ArgumentNullException">Thrown if <paramref name="a_source"/> is null.</exception>
    private static IDictionary<String, Object> ParseObject(object a_source)
    {
        #region Argument Validation

        if (a_source == null)
            throw new ArgumentNullException("a_source");

        #endregion

        var type = a_source.GetType();
        var props = type.GetProperties();

        return props.ToDictionary(x => x.Name, x => x.GetValue(a_source, null));
    }
}

Answer 4

If you are using .NET 3.5 SP1 or .NET 4, you can (ab)use RouteValueDictionary for this. It implements IDictionary<string, object> and has a constructor that accepts object and converts properties to key-value pairs.

It would then be trivial to loop through the keys and values to build your query string.

Answer 5

Here is how they do it in RouteValueDictionary:

  private void AddValues(object values)
    {
        if (values != null)
        {
            foreach (PropertyDescriptor descriptor in TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(values))
            {
                object obj2 = descriptor.GetValue(values);
                this.Add(descriptor.Name, obj2);
            }
        }
    }

Full Source is here: http://pastebin.com/c1gQpBMG

Answer 6

This takes just a tiny bit of reflection to accomplish.

var a = new { data1 = "test1", data2 = "sam", data3 = "bob" };
var type = a.GetType();
var props = type.GetProperties();
var pairs = props.Select(x => x.Name + "=" + x.GetValue(a, null)).ToArray();
var result = string.Join("&", pairs);