Test if a property is available on a dynamic variable

My situation is very simple. Somewhere in my code I have this:

dynamic myVariable = GetDataThatLooksVerySimilarButNotTheSame();

//How to do this?
if (myVariable.MyProperty.Exists)   
//Do stuff

So, basically my question is how to check (without throwing an exception) that a certain property is available on my dynamic variable. I could do GetType() but I'd rather avoid that since I don't really need to know the type of the object. All that I really want to know is whether a property (or method, if that makes life easier) is available. Any pointers?

I think there is no way to find out whether a dynamic variable has a certain member without trying to access it, unless you re-implemented the way dynamic binding is handled in the C# compiler. Which would probably include a lot of guessing, because it is implementation-defined, according to the C# specification.

So you should actually try to access the member and catch an exception, if it fails:

dynamic myVariable = GetDataThatLooksVerySimilarButNotTheSame();

try
{
    var x = myVariable.MyProperty;
    // do stuff with x
}
catch (RuntimeBinderException)
{
    //  MyProperty doesn't exist
} 

I thought I'd do a comparison of Martijn's answer and svick's answer...

The following program returns the following results:

Testing with exception: 2430985 ticks
Testing with reflection: 155570 ticks

void Main()
{
    var random = new Random(Environment.TickCount);

    dynamic test = new Test();

    var sw = new Stopwatch();

    sw.Start();

    for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++)
    {
        TestWithException(test, FlipCoin(random));
    }

    sw.Stop();

    Console.WriteLine("Testing with exception: " + sw.ElapsedTicks.ToString() + " ticks");

    sw.Restart();

    for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++)
    {
        TestWithReflection(test, FlipCoin(random));
    }

    sw.Stop();

    Console.WriteLine("Testing with reflection: " + sw.ElapsedTicks.ToString() + " ticks");
}

class Test
{
    public bool Exists { get { return true; } }
}

bool FlipCoin(Random random)
{
    return random.Next(2) == 0;
}

bool TestWithException(dynamic d, bool useExisting)
{
    try
    {
        bool result = useExisting ? d.Exists : d.DoesntExist;
        return true;
    }
    catch (Exception)
    {
        return false;
    }
}

bool TestWithReflection(dynamic d, bool useExisting)
{
    Type type = d.GetType();

    return type.GetProperties().Any(p => p.Name.Equals(useExisting ? "Exists" : "DoesntExist"));
}

As a result I'd suggest using reflection. See below.

Responding to bland's comment:

Ratios are reflection:exception ticks for 100000 iterations:

Fails 1/1: - 1:43 ticks
Fails 1/2: - 1:22 ticks
Fails 1/3: - 1:14 ticks
Fails 1/5: - 1:9 ticks
Fails 1/7: - 1:7 ticks
Fails 1/13: - 1:4 ticks
Fails 1/17: - 1:3 ticks
Fails 1/23: - 1:2 ticks
...
Fails 1/43: - 1:2 ticks
Fails 1/47: - 1:1 ticks

...fair enough - if you expect it to fail with a probability with less than ~1/47, then go for exception.

The above assumes that you're running GetProperties() each time. You may be able to speed up the process by caching the result of GetProperties() for each type in a dictionary or similar. This may help if you're checking against the same set of types over and again.

Maybe use reflection?

dynamic myVar = GetDataThatLooksVerySimilarButNotTheSame();
Type typeOfDynamic = myVar.GetType();
bool exist = typeOfDynamic.GetProperties().Where(p => p.Name.Equals("PropertyName")).Any(); 

Just in case it helps someone:

If the method GetDataThatLooksVerySimilarButNotTheSame() returns an ExpandoObject you can also cast to a IDictionary before checking.

dynamic test = new System.Dynamic.ExpandoObject();
test.foo = "bar";

if (((IDictionary<string, object>)test).ContainsKey("foo"))
{
    Console.WriteLine(test.foo);
}