Question

I have a 100 classes that have some similar elements and some unique. I’ve created an interface that names those similar items eg: interface IAnimal. What i would normally do is:

class dog : IAnimal 

But there are 100 classes and i don’t feel like going though them all and looking for the ones that i can apply IAnimal to.

What i want to do is this:

dog scruffy = new dog(); cat ruffles = new cat();  IAnimal[] animals = new IAnimal[] {scruffy as IAnimal, ruffles as IAnimal} // gives null 

or

IAnimal[] animals = new IAnimal[] {(IAnimal)scruffy, (IAnimal)ruffles} //throws exception 

then do

foreach (IAnimal animal in animals) {    animal.eat(); } 

Is there a way to make c# let me treat ruffles and scruffy as an IAnimal without having to write : IAnimal when writing the class.

Thanks!

EDIT (not lazy): The classes are generated off of sql stored proc metadata, which means every time it gets generated i would have to go back and add them in,or modify the code generator to identify the members that are in the interface, actually thats not a bad idea. I was hoping there was some sort of generics approach or something though.

Answer 1

You might solve this problem with partial classes: let the machine-generated/regenerated code be in one source file of each class, and the hand-coded part (defining the subclassing from IAnimal) in another.