Question

What does this sort of method signature mean

public partial class Entities : Entity.ObjectContext<Entities>

I know anything after the colon (:) is inherits from, but what does the

<Entities> 

mean?

Is it some sort of generic?

Answer 1

That’s not a method signature, but a (partial) class declaration.

“partial” signals that the rest of the class may be defined in one or more separate files. Partial classes are particularly useful when doing code generation (they are used for example by the WinForms designer to separate generated code from user code). The specific example you show is from Entity Framework.

The <Entities> part means that this is a Generic function.