Question

I have the following statement, I want to turn it into a Public Shared Function :

If isEmployee Then

    Dim employeeInstance As New Employee
    employeeInstance = GetEmployeeInstanceByUserId(userId)
    Return employeeInstance 

Else

    Dim studentInstance As New Student
    studentInstance = GetStudentInstanceByUserId(userId)
    Return studentInstance 

End If

Public Shared Function GetWorkerInstance(Byval isEmployee as Boolean) As …(not sure what to write here)…

There two possible return Type. I’m not sure what I should declare for the function return type.

Any suggestion? Thank you.

Answer 1

This would be easiest if both the Employee and Student classes derived from one parent (either a base class or interface), then you could use that as your return type.

You can’t declare different return types on the one function and you will not be able to create overrides that return different types, as the method signature resolution does not consider return types.