Question

I have two functions that do the basically same thing on two different classes…. each class has different properties.

For example:

public class ClassA
{
    public int ColorID {get;set;}
    public string ColorDescription {get;set;}
}

public class ClassB
{
    public int TypeID {get;set;}
    public string TypeDescription {get;set;}
}

public void ExFunctionSaveA(ClassA aClass)    
{
  aClass.ColorID=1;
  aClass.ColorDescription="My Color";
  Save();
}

public void ExFunctionSaveB(ClassB bClass)    
{
  bClass.TypeID=2;
  bClass.TypeDescription="My Type";
  Save();
}

As you can see the classes and the functions have the same type structure, just the property names are different… but I feel like I am repeating code doing this

Is there a way to make ExFunctionA and ExFunctionB into one function, so that I could use this for all classes that have similar structure

I know I could do some sort of generic thing like

public void ExFunctionSave<T>()   // T is either ClassA or ClassB
{
   .
   .
   .
   .
   Save();
}

but how would I handle the properties of each

Answer 1

If you can alter the definitions of your classes, then the best approach would be to make them implement a common interface that contains the properties you want to access:

public interface IDescribable
{
    int ID { get; set; }
    string Description { get; set; }
}

public class ClassA
{
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }

    public int ColorID 
    { 
        get { return ID; } 
        set { ID = value; } 
    }

    public string ColorDescription 
    { 
        get { return Description; } 
        set { Description = value; } 
    }
}

public class ClassB
{
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }

    public int TypeID 
    { 
        get { return ID; } 
        set { ID = value; } 
    }

    public string TypeDescription 
    { 
        get { return Description; } 
        set { Description = value; } 
    }
}

public void ExFunctionSave(IDescribable d, int id, string desc)    
{
    d.ID = id;
    d.Description = desc;
    Save();
}