Generic List Sorting

I have a custom entity that I have created within my web application and I am binding it to my DataGrid (I know I should be using a GridView, but that change will come later...). Previously the data was being retrieved into a DataTable, so when I needed to sort, I could just apply a DataView to the DataTable passing the appropriate sort filter and I was set. But with the Generic list, it was not that simple. I did a little research on Delegates and Predicates to maybe solve my problem, but then I was creating custom code for each and every list that I needed to perform this on. However, in my Google searching I discovered this article, Sorting GridView Using IComparer by TheDotNetGuy and he is a using a GenericComparer class to do exactly what I wanted. I really liked the flexibility that this solution provided.

using System;

using System.Web.UI.WebControls;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Reflection;

public class GenericComparer<T> : IComparer<T>

{

    private SortDirection _sortDirection;

    private string _sortExpression;

    /// <summary>

    /// Direction in which to sort.

    /// </summary>

    public SortDirection SortDirection

    {

        get { return this._sortDirection; }

        set { this._sortDirection = value; }

    }

    public GenericComparer(string sortExpression, SortDirection sortDirection)

    {

        this._sortExpression = sortExpression;

        this._sortDirection = sortDirection;

    }

    public int Compare(T x, T y)

    {

        PropertyInfo propertyInfo = typeof(T).GetProperty(_sortExpression);

        IComparable obj1 = (IComparable)propertyInfo.GetValue(x, null);

        IComparable obj2 = (IComparable)propertyInfo.GetValue(y, null);

        if (SortDirection == SortDirection.Ascending)

        {

            return obj1.CompareTo(obj2);

        }

        else return obj2.CompareTo(obj1);

    }

}

As an example, I could sort a list of personnel by last name as follows:

    List<MyApp.Entities.Personnel> personnel = MyApp.Entities.Personnel.Load();

    personnel.Sort(new GenericComparer<MyApp.Entities.Personnel>("LastName",SortDirection.Ascending);