Question

The context of the this question is an MVC app that takes strings and hopefully converts them to types and hands them off to generic code.

• I have a string representation of a type for input.
• I can’t seem to ever put a Type variable inside the <> for a generic method.
• Does that mean I have to manually spell out all the possible cases and generic method calls? Is that the right way to do this?
• It would be cool if a ModelBinder could figure out the type somehow where I could have a generic type parameter for an Action Method public ActionResult Something<T>(). But I don’t know if that is possible.

example

public ActionResult DoSomething(string typeName, int? id)
{
    var type = Type.GetType(typeName);
    if (type == typeof(Apple)) DoSomethingElse<Apple>(id);
    if (type == typeof(Orange)) DoSomethingElse<Orange>(id);
    //if etc ... to infinity
}

Answer 1

If you only have the type then you’d have to all it via reflection. Assuming “DoSomethingElse” is a method in the current class:

public ActionResult DoSomething(string typeName, int? id)
{
    Type thisType = this.GetType(); // Get your current class type
    var type = Type.GetType(typeName);
    MethodInfo doSomethingElseInfo = thisType.GetMethod("DoSomethingElse");
    MethodInfo concreteDoSomethingElse = doSomethingElseInfo.MakeGenericMethod(type);
    concreteDoSomething.Invoke(this, null);
}

That SHOULD work for you, although you should note, it’s not going to be pretty! 😉