Visual Basic

Public Class Contact

    Dim _contactID As zyp_ContactID

    Public Sub New()

    End Sub

    Public Property ContactID() As Guid
        Get
            Return _contactID.value
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As Guid)
            _contactID.value = value
        End Set
    End Property


    Public Class zyp_ContactID

        Protected Friend Sub New()

        End Sub

        Dim _contactID As Guid

        Public Property value() As Guid
            Get
                Return _contactID
            End Get
            Set(ByVal value As Guid)
                _contactID = value
            End Set
        End Property


    End Class

End Class
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In my previous work I've always just had public properties and used Refelection to hydrate from the database.  This allowed me to have a Services class that handled all the hydration through a DatabaseHelper class.  There was only one class for each business object that handled hydrating and only one class for the whole program which interfaced to the database.  Switching to a different database or even to XML or Web Services was just a one-class change (at least as far as the application code was concerned).

I've run into some real limitations with Properties and creating subclasses appears to be the solution.

I previously used code from Chris Rock, <a href="http://www.rocksthoughts.com/blog/archive/2008/04/24/creating-a-datarow-to-customer-object-mapper.aspx">http://www.rocksthoughts.com/blog/archive/2008/04/24/creating-a-datarow-to-customer-object-mapper.aspx</a>, to map from a database to a custom business object.  So long as I used the attribute it has worked perfectly.

So now I need help with the following:

For each property in the class

1. Is the property a class ?
2. If so, does the class have a property of "value" ?
3. If so, can we write to the property "value" ?
4. If so, write to the property "value".

Any hints are greatly appreciated...I'm stuck on this and hate the idea of not being able to use a generic mapper class.

As an alternative, is there a way to pass a reference to a function to a sub so that the sub can call the function referenced.  This is a backup option if I can't get the generic mapper class to work.