BindingUtility

BindingUtility is the shared, stateless reflection/TypeDescriptor engine underneath every binding operation in this library — AutoBindControlAncestor, BindingManager, and SAIFAJAXControlAncestor all delegate their path resolution and value transfer to it. Every method swallows reflection exceptions internally, which is the root cause of this library's "fail silently on a bad bind path" behavior. (BR-AJAX-005)

Purpose

• Resolves a dotted property path (e.g. Submission.Locations.Primary) segment-by-segment against a root object using TypeDescriptor, giving the whole library a single, consistent path-walking implementation. (BR-AJAX-004)
• Reads and writes a named property's value on a resolved object, underpinning both the bind-to-control and push-back-to-model directions of every auto-bind control.
• Swallows all reflection failures (Catch … 'gobble') so a mistyped bind path never raises an exception, at the cost of masking configuration errors. (BR-AJAX-005)

Context

• Namespace: SAIF.Presentation.Web.Controls.V2.AJAX
• Assembly/package: SAIF.Presentation.Web.Controls.AJAX.Infragistics111 (packaged in SAIF.BOF.Presentation.Web.Infragistics111)

Public members

Member	Signature	Purpose
GetObject	Shared Function GetObject(root As Object, path As String) As Object	Walks a dotted path from root, returning the object at the end of the path, or Nothing on any resolution failure (BR-AJAX-004)
GetObjectValue	Shared Function GetObjectValue(root As Object, propertyName As String) As Object	Reads a single named property's value from root via TypeDescriptor, returning Nothing on failure
SetObjectValue	Shared Sub SetObjectValue(root As Object, propertyName As String, value As Object)	Writes a value to a single named property on root via TypeDescriptor, silently doing nothing on failure
BindValue	Shared Function BindValue(root As Object, path As String, propertyName As String) As Object	Combines GetObject and GetObjectValue to resolve a full BindSource/BindProperty pair in one call

Behavioral notes

• Every method here wraps its reflection logic in a Try/Catch that discards the exception entirely, so callers cannot distinguish "path resolved to Nothing" from "path resolution threw" — both look identical to the caller. (BR-AJAX-005)
• Because failures are silent, a misconfigured BindSource/BindProperty produces no error and no audit trail — a page can appear to save successfully while a value was never actually written.*

Constraints and usage notes

• All property resolution goes through System.ComponentModel.TypeDescriptor, so bound properties must be discoverable by the standard component model (public properties work; properties hidden from TypeDescriptor will not resolve).
• Consumers relying on this helper for anything other than the auto-bind controls in this library should be aware that binding errors are invisible by design.

Related documentation

• Index
• Overview
• Architecture
• Business rules
• API reference

Note: Statements marked with * were inferred from code structure, naming conventions, or contextual evidence where direct confirmation was not available in source artifacts. Statements marked with ** could not be confirmed; treat as unknown until verified.

Sources

• SAIF.Presentation.Web.Controls.AJAX.Infragistics111/BindingUtility.vb