Question

I want to make a List and add derived classes to this list.

I see here that this is not possible by design in .NET: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479859.aspx#fundamentals_topic12

So what is the best practice solution to this? I guess I can box my derived classes to make them look like my superclass but that feels a little unwieldly. I suppose I should have designed my classes differently….but how?

Answer 1

If I understand what you are trying to do, you should be able to do it just fine.

List<SuperClass> myList = new List<SuperClass>();  SubClass item1 = new SubClass(); SuperClass item2 = new SuperClass();  myList.add(item1); myList.add(item2); 

This is valid code, and then you can easily retrieve the elements from the list, and use the basic rules of polymorphism for changing the types of the objects accordingly.