Question

I have created an application that allows users to capture information for entities based on a pre-defined template, which I create through a web interface.

So for instance I create a template and call it “Customer Template” with several properties like First Name, Last Name, Email address and I associate a “data type” to each property, which does not strictly map to a strongly typed type.

When the user then creates a new “Customer” a html form is generated with the appropriate properties / fields, which the user can provide and save.

The data types are called “Plain Text” or “Number” or “Currency” but do not map to a data type. What would be the best approach to associate a “number” to a strongly typed int, for instance, so that when I do operations on it that it is the correct type?

The number of “types” that the users will use are finite, maybe less than 10. Would I run into problems with a switch statement? Or is there another way?

I use c#.

Answer 1

I would use custom attributes to identify the CLR type mapped to your Form Types as such:

public enum FieldDataTypes 
{
    [FormTypeMetadata(typeof(string))]
    PlainText = 0, 
    [FormTypeMetadata(typeof(int))]
    Number = 1,
    [FormTypeMetadata(typeof(decimal))]
    Currency = 2
}

public class FormTypeMetadataAttribute : Attribute
{
    private readonly Type _baseType = typeof(object);
    public FormTypeMetadataAttribute(Type baseType)
    {
        if (baseType == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("baseType");
        _baseType = baseType;
    }

    public Type BaseType { get { return _baseType; } }
}

// your 'FieldData' implementation would look like this...

public class FieldData
{
    public FieldDataTypes FieldType { get; set; }

    public object Value { get; set; }
}

You can retrieve the FieldDataTypes’ attribute using reflection.