Question

delegate IEnumerable<T> GetFromSQLDelegate<T>(...);
public GetFromSQLDelegate myFunctionToCall;

The above does not compile because myFunctionToCall does not specify a type. I’m trying to “store” a generic delegate such that I can invoke it later as a regular generic function:

// ... somewhere in another code base ...
return MyObject.myFunctionToCall<string>(...);

C# complains because I’m not specifying a concrete type on the delegate storage property. Is there a (good) way to “store” a delegate capable of invoking a generic function without implementing various concrete type delegate scenarios?

Answer 1

You can store the value as System.Delegate, make it private, and define a function GetDelegate<T> that casts your stored delegate to the appropriate type:

private Delegate storedDelegate;

public myFunctionToCall<T> GetDelegate<T>() {
    return (myFunctionToCall<T>)storedDelegate;
}

You can then call it like this:

return MyObject.GetDelegate<string>()(...);

There is a little bit of ugliness going on around the ()(...) syntax, but it should probably do the trick.