Question
I have two classes with similar fields:
Class Foo {
string name;
int val;
};
Class Bar {
string name;
int val;
};
Is there a way to use Generics to retrieve the field names and values of objects of these classes? Something along the lines of:
string GetName<T> (T obj)
{
//returns T.name
}
I want to make sure there are compile time checks for this, in case the class fields were to change.
Update:
I do not control the definitions of classes Foo and Bar. They will be exposed to me in a library and can change.
I can use something like the following:
Type myType = myObject.GetType();
var value = myType.GetProperty("name").GetValue(myObject, null);
But I don't think this would check at compile time.
Accepted Answer
If you want compile-time safety, and you can't modify Foo and Bar, the typical way to deal with this is with overloads:
public string GetName(Foo o) { return o.Name; }
public string GetName(Bar o) { return o.Name; }
The compiler will automatically pick the method that matches the type of the parameter, so you just need to call it with
GetName(eitherObject);
...and it's type-safe.
You can't really use generics because Foo and Bar lack a common interface that exposes Name.
You can use Reflection, of course, but that means abandoning compile-time safety.
Popular Answer
This seems to be a case where you could use inheritance. If these two classes have similar fields you could make them implement a base class which has all the shared fields. Here is an example:
public class BaseEntity
{
int val;
protected string name;
public string Name
{
get
{
return name; // Only get is exposed to prevent modifications
}
}
}
public class ClassA : BaseEntity
{
// Other fields or methods
}
public class ClassB : BaseEntity
{
// Other fields or methods
}
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