Using Nameof in Blazor/razor.

[wstaelens]

In a blazor server app we have grids and the columns are bound to a field:

<DxGridDataColumn FieldName="Source.DocNr")" />

I don't like this code above as if the (view)model changes (e.g. rename of property) the strings are not renamed.
That is why I try to use nameof where possible, like this:

<DxGridDataColumn FieldName="@($"{nameof(HistoryGridItem.Source)}.{nameof(HistoryGridItem.Source.DocNr)}")" />

However this feels to clumsy to write it like this.

Let's say a field is bound to Foo.Bar.Car then I have really something like this:

<DxGridDataColumn FieldName="@($"{nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo)}.{nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar)}.{nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car)}")" />

Is there another 'not so clumsy' way to write this (and having the advantage of nameof in case of model changes/renames etc... ?

[KieranDevvs]

This might help you out: https://stackoverflow.com/a/75958935

[wstaelens]

as I thought, no real good built-in alternative available 😸

Anyway something like this would be useful:

nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car, 2); // gives me Bar.Car
nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car, 1); // gives me Car
nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car, 0); // same as nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car) and same as nameof(.., 1)
nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car, 3); // gives me Foo.Bar.Car
nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car, 4); // gives me HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car
nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car, 7); // gives me HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car

[KieranDevvs]

as I thought, no real good built-in alternative available 😸

Anyway something like this would be useful:

nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car, 2); // gives me Bar.Car
nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car, 1); // gives me Car
nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car, 0); // same as nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car) and same as nameof(.., 1)
nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car, 3); // gives me Foo.Bar.Car
nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car, 4); // gives me HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car
nameof(HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car, 7); // gives me HistoryGridItem.Foo.Bar.Car

Yeah there's a proposal to have language support but it was rejected by the review team as it didn't offer enough benefit.
There's a few solutions one of which I posted above. The next best thing would be to use one of the several NuGet package libraries out there that offer this feature via reflection. If reflection isnt suitable for your app because of AOT or some other requirement then your next best bet is to use source generators to reflect on the member and inject a string. I'm not aware of any source generator nuget packages yet so unless you can find one, you would have to write your own implementation (but it shouldn't be that difficult)

Good luck 👍