Question

I have a class that is maps to a field in a database. The class only cares about the name of the field and its related .NET type. The type can be string, int, datetime, etc.

class Foo() {     string Name { get; set; }     Type FooType { get; set; } } 

I have another class that inherits from Foo that adds a property for a value. Right now I store the value as an object and use a switch statement to box the value based on the base classes FooType.

class FooWithStuff() : Foo {     object Value { get; set; }    } 

Is there way to implement this with generics to give type safety for the values?

Edit: I have made the key requirement bold. When declaring a list say Foo it needs a type. If I were doing this against custom classes I would create and interface and use that. However here I am using int, string, DateTime, etc. Int is a struct, string is an object, so a Foo< object> does not work for both.

Answer 1

Define your class like this:

class Foo<T> : IFoo {      public Foo(string name)     {         Name = name;     }      string Name { get; set; }     T Value {get; set;}     Type FooType { get { return typeof(T); } } } 

You could then define the interface IFoo as:

string Name { get; set; } Type FooType { get; set; } 

And declare a list as:

List<IFoo> list = new List<IFoo>();