How to access generic property without knowing the closed generic type
- by Martin Booka Weser
I have a generic Type as follows
public class TestGeneric<T>
{
public T Data { get; set; }
public TestGeneric(T data)
{
this.Data = data;
}
}
If i have now an object (which is coming from some external source) from which i know that it's type is of some closed TestGeneric<, but i don't know the TypeParameter T. Now I need to access the Data of my object. Problem is that i can't cast the object, since i don't know exactly to which closed TestGeneric.
I use
// thx to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/457676/c-reflection-check-if-a-class-is-derived-from-a-generic-class
private static bool IsSubclassOfRawGeneric(Type rawGeneric, Type subclass)
{
while (subclass != typeof(object))
{
var cur = subclass.IsGenericType ? subclass.GetGenericTypeDefinition() : subclass;
if (rawGeneric == cur)
{
return true;
}
subclass = subclass.BaseType;
}
return false;
}
to make sure, my object is of the generic type. The code in question is as follows:
public static void Main()
{
object myObject = new TestGeneric<string>("test"); // or from another source
if (IsSubclassOfRawGeneric(typeof(TestGeneric<>), myObject.GetType()))
{
// the following gives an InvalidCastException
// var data = ((TestGeneric<object>)myObject).Data;
// if i try to access the property with reflection
// i get an InvalidOperationException
var dataProperty = typeof(TestGeneric<>).GetProperty("Data");
object data = dataProperty.GetValue(myObject, new object[] { });
}
}
I need the Data regardless of its type (well, if i could ask for its type using GetType() would be fine, but not necessary) since i just want to dump it in xml using ToString().
Any suggestions? Thanx.
