Reflecting a private field from a base class
You can manually go up in the inheritance chain to get the base fields:
Given these classes:
class SuperClass1
{
private int myField;
}
class SuperClass2 : SuperClass1
{
}
class MyClass : SuperClass2
{
}
This should work:
var myObj = new MyClass();
var myField = typeof(MyClass).BaseType
.BaseType
.GetField("myField", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
There's a more generic solution in this SO answer: Not getting fields from GetType().GetFields with BindingFlag.Default
In a similar vein to BrokenGlass's solution, you could do this to make it a bit more generic:
class Base { private int _baseField; }
class Derived : Base { }
class Mine : Derived { }
And then:
Type t = typeof(Mine);
FieldInfo fi = null;
while (t != null)
{
fi = t.GetField("_baseField", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
if (fi != null) break;
t = t.BaseType;
}
if (fi == null)
{
throw new Exception("Field '_baseField' not found in type hierarchy.");
}
As a utility method:
public static void SetField(object target, string fieldName, object value)
{
if (target == null)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException("target", "The assignment target cannot be null.");
}
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(fieldName))
{
throw new ArgumentException("fieldName", "The field name cannot be null or empty.");
}
Type t = target.GetType();
FieldInfo fi = null;
while (t != null)
{
fi = t.GetField(fieldName, BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
if (fi != null) break;
t = t.BaseType;
}
if (fi == null)
{
throw new Exception(string.Format("Field '{0}' not found in type hierarchy.", fieldName));
}
fi.SetValue(target, value);
}
And then:
Mine m = new Mine();
SetField(m, "_baseField", 10);