Question

In my spare time, I’m creating a small business framework that I can reuse for my school projects. I suppose it would be similar to a dumbed down CSLA, if that can give you an idea.

I’m having a bit of trouble with the business rule class though. Here’s what it looks like right now :

public class Rule
{
    public string PropertyName { get; }
    public string Description { get; }
    public Func<object, bool> ValidationRule { get; }

    public Rule(string propertyName, string message, Func<object, bool> validationRule)
    {
        this.PropertyName = propertyName;
        this.Description = description;
        this.ValidationRule = validationRule;
    }

    public bool IsBroken(object value)
    {
        return ValidationRule(value);
    }
}

I’m not a huge fan of the boxing and unboxing I’m doing when I’m checking to see if the rule is broken (value can be any type).

Of course, I could just make the whole class generic and have my IsBroken function take an object of type T (probably a better idea than using objects anyway), but I was wondering if it would be possible to do something similar to the following :

public class Rule
{
    public Func<T, bool> ValidationRule { get; }
    public bool IsBroken<T>(T value)
    {
        return ValidationRule(value);
    }
}

Without declaring the class with a generic type?

Any other tips are welcome.

Answer 1

I was wondering if it would be possible to do something similar to the following :
[…]
Without declaring the class with a generic type?

No, it’s not possible. How would the compiler and/or the runtime know what type is T for property declaration?