Question

Possible Duplicate:
getting type T from IEnumerable<T>

I Have a property type of IEnumerable

public IEnumerable PossibleValues { get; set; }

How can I discover the base type that it was instanced?

For example, if it was created like this:

PossibleValues = new int?[] { 1, 2 }

I want to know that type is ‘int’.

Answer 1

You can do this if you want the type of PossibleValues:

var type = PossibleValues.GetType().ToString(); // "System.Nullable`1[System.Int32][]"

Or you can do this if you want the type of an item contained in PossibleValues (assuming the array actually has values as described in your question):

var type = PossibleValues.Cast<object>().First().GetType().ToString(); // "System.Int32"

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EDIT

If it’s a possibility that the array may contain no items, then you’ll have to do some null checking, of course:

var firstItem = PossibleValues.Cast<object>().FirstOrDefault(o => o != null);
var type = string.Empty;
if (firstItem != null)
{
    type = firstItem.GetType().ToString();
}