Question

It seems strange but I cast some custom WPF User Controls to WPF UserControl and I have to call some method which have all of them. Is it possible? How to do it?

foreach (var kid in ((MainWindow)App.Current.Windows[0]).MainCanvas.Children)
{
string kidType = kid.GetType().FullName;
if (kidType.EndsWith("MyUserControl"))
{
    UserControl myUserControl = (UserControl)kid;

    myUserControl.Hide() // <- this method I want to call bu it is "hidden" because of teh casting which doesn't provide access to it.

Note: The method Hide() is public.

SOLUTION:

Hi all!

Thanks for your input! Finally I got the solution.

foreach (var kid in ((MainWindow)App.Current.Windows[0]).MainCanvas.Children)
{
  string kidType = kid.GetType().FullName;
  if (kidType.EndsWith("UControl"))
  {
     Type t = kid.GetType();
     object obj = Activator.CreateInstance(t);
     t.InvokeMember("Hide", BindingFlags.Default | BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, obj, new object[] { });

      // And here there is a 1000% better solution of @Erno
      // dynamic myUserControl = kid;
      // myUserControl.Hide();
   }
}

where is

public void Hide()
{
    // do stuff
} 

Answer 1

dynamic might be useful to prevent writing reflection code (See this):

foreach (var kid in ((MainWindow)App.Current.Windows[0]).MainCanvas.Children) {
    string kidType = kid.GetType().FullName;
    if (kidType.EndsWith("MyUserControl"))
    {
        dynamic myUserControl = kid;
        myUserControl.Hide();  
    } 
}

Make sure you add some exception handling just in case you encounter a type that fits the name but doesn’t implement Hide.

If you are worried about that you could implement an interface on all the UserControls and try-cast to that interface instead.