Question

I have a DataGridView that I want to use to store generic data. I want to keep a typed data list in the DataGridView class so that all of the sorts, etc. can be handled internally. But I don’t want to have to set the type on the DataGridView since I won’t know the data type until the InitializeData method is called.

public class MyDataGridView : DataGridView {
    private List<T> m_data;
    public InitializeData<T>(List<T> data) {
       m_data = data;
    }
    ... internal events to know when the datagrid wants to sort ...
    m_data.Sort<T>(...)
}

Is this possible? If so, how?

Answer 1

If you won’t know the type until you call InitializeData, then the type clearly can’t be a compile-time part of the object.

Do you know everything you need to know about the sorting when you call InitializeData<T>? If so, how about you do something like:

private IList m_data;
private Action m_sorter;

public InitializeData<T>(List<T> data)
{
    m_data = data;
    // This captures the data variable. You'll need to
    // do something different if that's not good enough
    m_sorter = () => data.Sort();
}

Then when you need to sort later, you can just call m_sorter().

If you might sort on different things, you could potentially change it from an Action to Action<string> or whatever you’d need to be able to sort on.