Can I implement a generic type and pass it a type that is known only at runtime?
I'm pulling serialized data from a database along with an object type (where one field contains the object type and one contains an XML string of serialized data).
I've got a generic serializer that has a serialize and deserialize method:
public static class Serializer<T>
{
public static string Serialize(T objectData) { }
public static T Deserialize(string xmlData) { }
}
Given that the object type is specified in the database field, is there any way for me to dynamically set what T is? - This is my line of thought (although this doesn't work):
Type t = Type.GetType(objectTypeName);
t objData = Serializer<t>.Deserialize(objectXmlString);
I was hoping to refactor some code out of a switch statement where T is a set value, but I can't figure out if it can be done, or if so, how I would 开发者_Go百科go about that.
Thanks in advance.
You can do this, but it involves reflection - MakeGenericType
, in particular:
typeof(Serializer<>).MakeGenericType(t).GetMethod("Deserialize").Invoke(...);
I haven't completed that, since your example is confusing; the method is instance, but is called as though it were static.
Interestingly (perhaps), dynamic
might make this easier in 4.0 - I don't have my VM to hand, but imagine:
static void SomeGenericMethod<T>(T arg) { Serializer<T>.SomeMethod(arg); }
...
dynamic obj = ...
SomeGenericMethod(obj);
I'd need to check, but I expect that would do a lot of the heavy lifting for us.
The other common approach is to expose methods that work on a Type
, rather than via generics.
No. However, it should not be too difficult to create additional overloads of your serialisation methods to handle this requirement:
public string Serialize(Type objectType, object objectData) { }
public object Deserialize(Type objectType, string xmlData) { }
The serialisation APIs in .NET all take Type
instances as parameters anyway.
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