Question

Lets say I have this class (just as an example):

internal class Packet
{

    private readonly UInt32 _length;
    private readonly Byte _type;
    private readonly UInt32 _requestId;

}

There are many different types of packets each of which inherit from this class and each packet type can have any number of properties of varying types.

Is there a way to implement every type of packet without using inheritance?

I thought about using a property such as List<Tuple<Type,Value>> _typesSpecificValues – I know it won’t compile but I don’t know how else to express what I mean.

I need to avoid creating an inheriting class for each type of packet because there are about 50 types – or am I just being lazy??

Answer 1

It sounds like you should be creating separate classes, yes.

However, I’m not sure whether I’d make them derive from this class. It sounds like this should be in a Header class (or possibly even a struct) and then you could have multiple classes which each contain a Header.