I’m working on a feature which allows you make configuration changes to List instances on feature activation. The exact configuration is provided to the feature via feature properties and I wanted to be able to set property values on the SPList instance dynamically using reflection.

Here’s the code which does that;

private static bool SetListProperty(SPList list, string propertyName, string propertyValue)
{
	if (list == null) 
		throw new ArgumentNullException("list");
	if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(propertyName)) 
		throw new ArgumentNullException("propertyName");

	var t = list.GetType();
	if (t == null) throw new Exception("Invalid reflection object");
	var pi = t.GetProperty(propertyName);
	if (pi == null) throw new Exception("Invalid property: " + propertyName);

	if (!pi.CanWrite)
		throw new NotSupportedException("Property " + propertyName + " is Read Only!");

	try
	{
		var ovalue = Convert.ChangeType(propertyValue, pi.PropertyType);
		pi.SetValue(list, ovalue, null);
	}
	catch(Exception ex)
	{
		throw new Exception(string.Format("Unable to set property: {0} to: {1}", 
										propertyName, propertyValue), ex);	
	}

	return true;
}