Question

Here is an easy question (C# noob here) and I can’t find how to do this (I have C# 4.0 reference from Schildt but not sure what I am looking for yet).

Say I have two objects created by two different classes, but have fields and/or methods with the same name. For example:

public class Object1 {
  bool enable;
  public void Reset(){
    enable = false;
  }
}

public class Object2 {
  bool enable;
  public void Reset(){
    enable = false;
  }
}

Objects are very dissimilar, justifying the creation of two different objects. However, I have many objects with the common ‘enable’ field and ‘Reset()’ method.

So here is what I would like to do (in pseudocode or whatever this is):

void Manipulate(ref object pObj){
  (pObj).enable = true;
  (pObj).Reset();
}

void Main(){
  Manipulate(obj1);
  Manipulate(obj2);
}

How can I do this? I am not sure how to create an object that can point to objects from different classes.

Thanks!

---

Thanks to all the answers. I went through interfaces and understood them as an ‘alias’ and couldn’t figure out what was the usefulness of them.

Answer 1

This is what interfaces are for:

public interface ICanResetAndEnable
{
    // Note: interfaces cannot have fields, only properties and methods.
    bool Enable { get; set; }
    void Reset();
}

public class Object1 : ICanResetAndEnable {
  bool Enable { get; set; }
  public void Reset(){
    Enable = false;
  }
}

public class Object2 : ICanResetAndEnable {
  bool Enable { get; set; }
  public void Reset(){
    Enable = false;
  }
}

You then define your Manipulate method to accept a parameter of any type that implements this interface:

void Manipulate(ICanResetAndEnable obj)
{
    // Do whatever.
}