Question

The title is kind of obscure. What I want to know is if this is possible:

string typeName = <read type name from somwhere>; Type myType = Type.GetType(typeName);  MyGenericClass<myType> myGenericClass = new MyGenericClass<myType>(); 

Obviously, MyGenericClass is described as:

public class MyGenericClass<T> 

Right now, the compiler complains that ‘The type or namespace ‘myType’ could not be found.’ There has got to be a way to do this.

Answer 1

You can’t do this without reflection. However, you can do it with reflection. Here’s a complete example:

using System; using System.Reflection;  public class Generic<T> {     public Generic()     {         Console.WriteLine('T={0}', typeof(T));     } }  class Test {     static void Main()     {         string typeName = 'System.String';         Type typeArgument = Type.GetType(typeName);          Type genericClass = typeof(Generic<>);         // MakeGenericType is badly named         Type constructedClass = genericClass.MakeGenericType(typeArgument);          object created = Activator.CreateInstance(constructedClass);     } } 

Note: if your generic class accepts multiple types, you must include the commas when you omit the type names, for example:

Type genericClass = typeof(IReadOnlyDictionary<,>); Type constructedClass = genericClass.MakeGenericType(typeArgument1, typeArgument2);