Question

I have two similar methods that basically does the same thing only with different objects.
What’s the best way to make a generic method out of this if possible?

The two objects:

public class StoreObject {
  int Key;
  string Address;
  string Country;
  int Latitude;
  int Longitude;
}

public class ProjectObject {
  int ProjectKey;
  string Address;
  string Description;
}

The two methods that I potentially want to make into a generic:

public StoreObject GetStoreByKey(int key)
{
  using (DBEntities dbe = new DBEntities())
  {
    StoreObject so = new StoreObject();
    var storeObject = (from s in dbe.StoreTables
                       where s.Key == key
                       select s).First();

    so.Key = storeObject.key;
    so.Address = storeObject.address;
    so.Country = storeObject.country;
    so.Latitude = storeObject.latitude;
    so.Longitude = storeObject.longitude;

    return so;
  }
}

public ProjectObject GetProjectByKey(int projectKey)
{
  using (DBEntities dbe = new DBEntities())
  {
    ProjectObject po = new ProjectObject();
    var projectObject = (from p in dbe.ProjectTables
                       where p.ProjectKey == projectKey
                       select p).First();

    po.Key = projectObject.p_key;
    po.Address = projectObject.p_address;
    po.Description = projectObject.p_description;

    return po;
  }
}

I must note that:
– I have no control over how the table fields are named (ie. p_description).
– StoreTable in the DB, for example, may have other properties (like telephone, postal code, etc) but I’m only interested in showing what I’ve shown in the code.
– The same goes for the ProjectTable.

Answer 1

Well, the tricky part is that your entities have different properties, so using generics to populate the different properties within one method will not be worth it. But you can return the whole object and then just use the properties you are interested in.

public T GetEntityByKey<T>(int key)
{
  using (DBEntities dbe = new DBEntities())
  {
    return = dbe.StoreTables.Set<T>.Find(new object[] {key});
  }
}

And to use it

StoreObject so  = GetEntityByKey<StoreObject>(123);
if(so != null)
{
    int lat = so.Latitude;
}