Change a property name at runtime

Question

Can I change the field of a class at runtime in c#?

for example, if i have the class:

public class ExampleClass{
    public string Name;
}

can I Change it at runtime, using reflection or other techniques, to change the Name to Name1?

public class ExampleClass{
    public string Name1;
}

Answer 1

No, you cannot change the actual members of a type at runtime

Options:

• create a new type on the fly, that looks a lot like ExampleClass , but has different members - and presumably some mapping code between them
• if the intent is for some kind of runtime binding, consider ICustomTypeDescriptor or IDynamicMetaObjectProvider - which will allow some frameworks to treat it as though it had a Name1 , even though it actually doesn't (note: things like DynamicObject and ExpandoObject include implementations of IDynamicMetaObjectProvider , but you can do it in other ways)
• use an indexer, ie so that var val = obj["Name1"]; returns something meaningful

Answer 2

Have a look at DynamicObject:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.dynamic.dynamicobject.aspx