Question

I have a problem about designing my application. I have a webservice with methods. Methods will return a encrypted binary data. Data after decrypting is a list of objects. Object can be Object1, or Object2, or Object3 which depend on called method.

I want to write only one function which return a List of object I want depend on called method. Example:

public static List<TKey> Generate(DataType type)
        {
            List<TKey> l = new List<TKey>();
            switch (type)
            {
                case DataType.String:
                    byte[] data = Decrypt(MyWebService.GetData1());
                    l = (List<TKey>)data;

                case DataType.Int:
                    byte[] data = Decrypt(MyWebService.GetData1());
                    l = (List<TKey>)data;
            }
            return l;
        }

Note: this function has error when building. I give this function so that you can understand my purpose.

My Purpose is here:

List<string> myString = Generate(DataType.String);
List<int> myInt = Generate(DataType.Int);

Thanks.

Answer 1

You are most likely looking for a generic method:

public static List<T> Generate<T>()
{
   byte[] data = Decrypt(MyWebService.GetData1());
   List<T> l = Deserialize<T>(data);   
   return l;
}

You also will need a type specific deserialization method (Deserialize in the example), which would do the actual work of converting an arbitrary byte array into a list of a specific type – since it is entirely up to you how that mapping should work (the framework can’t know really) you will have to implement it yourself.