A Reflective Question

I was recently asked a Question in an interview about Creating a function that can read reflection of certain aspects off a class instance. (some version of debugger … I guess)

anyway, here’s my solution (using recursion of course)

private static string Reflective(string instanceName, Type type, object obj, int depth)
        {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

            string format = "* <{0}> {1}";
            for (int i = 0; i <= depth; i++) 
                format = ("\t") + format;
            
            sb.AppendFormat("\n" + format, 
                 type.Name, instanceName);

            if (obj == null)
                return sb.ToString() 
                    + "-> {Null}";

            FieldInfo[] fields = type.GetFields();
            foreach (FieldInfo fld in fields)
            {
                format = "<{2}> {0}={1}";
                for (int i = 0; i <= depth; i++) 
                    format = ("\t") + format;
                if (fld.FieldType.IsPrimitive)
                {
                    string val = (obj==null)? "NULL" : fld.GetValue(obj)+"";
                    sb.AppendFormat("\n\t" + format, 
                        fld.Name, val, fld.FieldType.Name);
                }
                else
                {
                    sb.Append(
                        Reflective(fld.Name, fld.FieldType, 
                        fld.GetValue(obj),
                        depth+1));
                }
            }
            return sb.ToString();
        }
    }

How to use

var computer = new Computer
           {
               CPUs = 4,
               Display = null,
               AnotherDisp = new Monitor { 
                   Height = 768, Width = 1024, Zoom = 2 
               }

           };


           string s = Reflective("computer", computer.GetType(), computer, 0 );
           Console.WriteLine(s);

Will print out

* <Computer> computer

        * <Monitor> Display-> {Null}


        <Int32> CPUs=4


        * <Monitor> AnotherDisp


                <Int32> Width=1024


                <Int32> Height=768


                <Int32> Zoom=2