Creating an object passing a lambda expression to the constructor - c#-3.0

Question

I have an object with a number of properties.
I want to be able to assign some of these properties when I call the constructor.
The obvious solution is to either have a constructor that takes a parameter for each of the properties, but that's nasty when there are lots. Another solution would be to create overloads that each take a subset of property values, but I could end up with dozens of overloads.
So I thought, wouldn't it be nice if I could say..
MyObject x = new MyObject(o => o.Property1 = "ABC", o.PropertyN = xx, ...);
The problem is, I'm too dim to work out how to do it.
Do you know?

Answer 1

C# 3 allows you to do this with its object initializer syntax.
Here is an example:
using System;
class Program
{
static void Main()
{
Foo foo = new Foo { Bar = "bar" };
}
}
class Foo
{
public String Bar { get; set; }
}
The way this works is that the compiler creates an instance of the class with compiler-generated name (like <>g__initLocal0). Then the compiler takes each property that you initialize and sets the value of the property.
Basically the compiler translates the Main method above to something like this:
static void Main()
{
// Create an instance of "Foo".
Foo <>g__initLocal0 = new Foo();
// Set the property.
<>g__initLocal0.Bar = "bar";
// Now create my "Foo" instance and set it
// equal to the compiler's instance which
// has the property set.
Foo foo = <>g__initLocal0;
}

Answer 2

The object initializer syntax is the easiest to use and requires no extra code for the constructor.
However, if you need to do something more complex, like call methods, you could have a constructor that takes an Action param to perform the population of the object.
public class MyClass
{
public MyClass(Action<MyClass> populator)
{
populator.Invoke(this);
}
public int MyInt { get; set; }
public void DoSomething()
{
Console.WriteLine(this.MyInt);
}
}
Now you can use it like so.
var x = new MyClass(mc => { mc.MyInt = 1; mc.DoSomething(); });

Answer 3

Basically what Andrew was trying to say is if you have a class (MyObject for eg) with N properties, using the Object Initializer syntax of C# 3.0, you can set any subset of the N properties as so:
MyObject x = new MyObject {Property1 = 5, Property4 = "test", PropertyN = 6.7};
You can set any of the properties / fields that way./

Answer 4

class MyObject
{
public MyObject(params Action<MyObject>[]inputs)
{
foreach(Action<MyObject> input in inputs)
{
input(this);
}
}
}
I may have the function generic style wrong, but I think this is sort of what you're describing.