Question

I have the following scenario:

public interface IParam
{
    Object Value {get;set;}
} 

public abstract class BaseClass: IParam
{
    public virtual object Value {get;set;}
}

public class IntSubClass:BaseClass
{
    public override object Value {get;set;}
}

To the outside world, this interface is exposed. All properties are accessed via IParam. The drawback of this approach is a lot of casting issue.

IParam dummy = ParameterList[abc];
int index = (int)dummy.Value;

Request please advise how this problem can be solved using generics. To the outside, I can only expose generic interface.

Answer 1

If we assume the parameters can be of different types, then simply: no.

Oh, you can introduce generics… but that just changes things from

int val = (int)(paramList["abc"].Value);

to:

int val = ((IParam<int>)paramList["abc"]).Value;

doesn’t really help much. The only other option is implicit conversion operators, which a: don’t work on interfaces, and b: are not very clear / obvious.

Frankly, I’d just use the cast. It isn’t a problem. A box/unbox is not hugely expensive, and the code is clear in its purpose.