Is there any way to pass the ability to create a particular entity field across methods?

Taking an IEntityField2 parameter isn't any good (supplying EntityClassFields.FieldName as the value) - because I need to use the entity field in several places (so need to be able to create a "fresh" instance of that field).

I've looked at using the EntityFieldFactory, but can only really use the overloaded version of Create that takes string parameters - and then would lose all compile time checking of the values being passed in.

Hope this makes sense... does anyone have any ideas?

Hope this makes sense...

Not quite enough for me Would you please elaborate more with code samples?

So, I've got a helper method, that does a bunch of logic, that I'm trying to share across a bunch of tables that have a common structure (but different data).

public static void GetTags(string[] tags, int maxTags, TypedListBase2 typedList, IEntityRelation mappingRelation, IEntityField2 mappingField) { ... }

In there, I've got some code along the lines of:

IGroupByCollection subGroupByClause = new GroupByCollection(); subGroupByClause.Add(mappingField); subGroupByClause.HavingClause = new PredicateExpression(mappingField.SetAggregateFunction(AggregateFunction.Count) == tags.Length);

Now, I can't use mappingField twice (because SetAggregateFunction affects the field directly) - I need a different instance of mappingField for the Add(mappingField) and for within the HavingClause.

So I need a way of saying "use this mapping field" . At the moment I can only think of passing in a delegate or something that will create the required entity field? Hoping that's a little clearer... but I fear not!

If your after a separate instance of the EntityFields object have you tried using the Clone method which performs a deep copy of the field?