Using reflection to get property attributes from a metadata class

Question

I have a LINQ generated class called Project.

I wanted to add some attributes to the generated properties, so I defined a partial class with the MetadataType attribute.

[MetadataType(typeof(Project_HiddenProps))]
public partial class Project : IProject
{
    // There are also a few additional properties defined here.
}

public class Project_HiddenProps
{
    [HiddenColumn]
    public System.Guid Id { get; set; } 
    // Id is an auto-generated property that I've added a custom attribute to
}

Later, I use reflection to try to get the attributes of this property.

var customAttributes = prop.GetCustomAttributes(false);

I only get one attribute, though, of type System.Data.Linq.Mapping.ColumnAttribute . My HiddenColumn attribute is not included in the collection. My question is how to get at these metadata properties using reflection.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can reflect the other class, using a convention approach:

var type = Type.GetType(entityType.FullName + "_HiddenProps," + entityType.AssemblyQualifiedName);
type.GetProperty("Id").GetCustomAttributes(false);

The buddy class cannot be automatically merged with the core component. That is only used for internal framework metadata (assume this is MVC, or maybe dynamic data?)

As @CyanLite mentioned in the comments, you can use the Meta class from the metadata attribute described here (the link Cyan added).