c# - Type conversion issue when setting property through reflection

Question

We have a property of type long? that gets filled with an int.

This works fine when i just set the property directly obj.Value = v; but when i try and set the property through reflection info.SetValue(obj, v, null); it gives me a the following exception:

Object of type 'System.Int32' cannot be converted to type 'System.Nullable`1[System.Int64]'.

This is a simplified scenario:

    class TestClass
    {
        public long? Value { get; set; }
    }

    [TestMethod]
    public void TestMethod2()
    {
        TestClass obj = new TestClass();
        Type t = obj.GetType();

        PropertyInfo info = t.GetProperty("Value");
        int v = 1;

        // This works
        obj.Value = v;

        // This does not work
        info.SetValue(obj, v, null);
    }

Why does it not work when setting the property through reflection while it works when setting the property directly?

Answer 1

Check full article : How to set value of a property using Reflection?

full code if you are setting value for nullable type

public static void SetValue(object inputObject, string propertyName, object propertyVal)
{
    //find out the type
    Type type = inputObject.GetType();

    //get the property information based on the type
    System.Reflection.PropertyInfo propertyInfo = type.GetProperty(propertyName);

    //find the property type
    Type propertyType = propertyInfo.PropertyType;

    //Convert.ChangeType does not handle conversion to nullable types
    //if the property type is nullable, we need to get the underlying type of the property
    var targetType = IsNullableType(propertyType) ? Nullable.GetUnderlyingType(propertyType) : propertyType;

    //Returns an System.Object with the specified System.Type and whose value is
    //equivalent to the specified object.
    propertyVal = Convert.ChangeType(propertyVal, targetType);

    //Set the value of the property
    propertyInfo.SetValue(inputObject, propertyVal, null);

}
private static bool IsNullableType(Type type)
{
    return type.IsGenericType && type.GetGenericTypeDefinition().Equals(typeof(Nullable<>));
}

---

you need to convert value like this i.e you need to convert value to your property type like as below

PropertyInfo info = t.GetProperty("Value");
object value = null;
try 
{ 
    value = System.Convert.ChangeType(123, 
        Nullable.GetUnderlyingType(info.PropertyType));
} 
catch (InvalidCastException)
{
    return;
}
propertyInfo.SetValue(obj, value, null);

you need to do this because you cannot convert any arbirtary value to given type...so you need to convert it like this