Test if a property is available on a dynamic variable

Maybe use reflection?

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

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.