Question

Is it possible to write in C# method in such a way that when I write

 String contestId = getParameter("contestId")

i get contestId in string, but when I write:

 int contestId = getParameter("contestId")

i get contestId parsed to integer?

This is only simple example showing what i try to achieve.

Answer 1

Nope it’s not possible to overload methods solely based on their return type. You could, however, introduce a generic parameter:

T getParameter<T>(string input) {
    // ... do stuff based on T ...
}

And if you were using C# 3.0 you could use this method as:

var str = getParameter<string>("contestid");
var integer = getParameter<int>("contestid");

thus saying the actual type only once.