Question

I have a Variable class and and 3 subclasses: VariableBool, VariableLong and VariableDouble. Each subclass defines only a value member of the type of the suffix.

Now, I need to transfert objects based on these classes over WCF. I have multiple clients registering their variale to a server. Whenever a value changes on one client, it’s updated in all other clients.

My question is: is there a way to do:

someVar.Value = anotherVar.Value; 

regardless of the type, wihout having to check for type, e.g.:

VariableBool anotherVarBool = anotherVar as VariableBool; if (anotherVarBool != null) {   (someVar as VariableBool).Value = anotherVar.Value; } // check other types... 

What am I missing? Is there a patern of some kind? Could I use reflection? Also, I don’t think I can use Generics because of the WCF (I’ve tried but I could make it work).

Thanks

Answer 1

If you are using mex-generated WCF proxies, then I suspect reflection (or ComponentModel) is indeed the simplest option – something like:

public static void Copy<T>(T source, T destination,     string propertyName) {     PropertyInfo prop = typeof(T).GetProperty(propertyName);     prop.SetValue(destination, prop.GetValue(source, null), null); } 

Or if you want to use it even with the variable types as the base-class:

public static void Copy(object source, object destination,     string propertyName) {     PropertyInfo sourceProp = source.GetType().GetProperty(propertyName);     PropertyInfo destProp = destination.GetType().GetProperty(propertyName);     destProp.SetValue(destination, sourceProp.GetValue(source, null), null); }