Question

Is it possible to cast a command-line passed string object back to actual object?

I want to do the following, but throwing error can’t cast.

 Button objPro = (Button) sender;
 cProduct cp = (cProduct) objPro.CommandArgument;

If no, then why?

This is what the string holds.

 cProduct cpObj = (cProduct)e.Row.DataItem;
 Button btnAddProduct = (Button)e.Row.FindControl("btnAddProduct");
 if (btnAddProduct != null)
 {
     btnAddProduct.CommandArgument = cpObj.ToString();
 }

Answer 1

You probably can’t, because it’s a string. It’s not a cProduct (whatever that is – consider following .NET naming conventions and naming it Product instead).

Now you could do this if you had a explicit conversion operator in cProduct to create an instance from a string.

You haven’t really explained what’s in the string, or what’s in the type – but if your cProduct type provides a ToString method which contains all the data in a reversible form, then you could easily write a method or a constructor to create the product again:

Product product = new Product(objPro.CommandArgument);

or maybe:

Product product = Product.Parse(objPro.CommandArgument);

You’ll have to write that constructor/method, of course.

I would strongly recommend using a constructor or method instead of an operator, just to keep your code clearer – it’s very rarely a good idea to write your own conversion operators.