Generic Type

[Airslash]

Hello,

Hope I can explain this properly...

I'm building sort of SettingsManager class that keeps track of various settings off the application. I'm aware there are build in stuff for that in C#, but thats not the issue here.

In the XML, I make it simply by constructing the file like this:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<setting type="" name="">value</setting>
<setting type="" name="">value</setting>
</xml>

I've designed a class that looks like this:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
 
namespace Tools.Config
{
    public class Setting<T>
    {
        #region Constructors
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Default constructor of the Setting class. Creates a new instance
        /// of the Setting class and initializes the internal fields to the values
        /// provided. The value of the class will be set to the default value of
        /// the specified type.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="name">The name of the Setting.</param>
        public Setting(String name)
            : this(name, default(T))
        { }
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Overloaded constructor of the Setting class. Creates a new instance
        /// of the Setting class and initializes the internal fields to the
        /// values provided.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="name">The name of the Setting.</param>
        /// <param name="value">The value of the Setting.</param>
        public Setting(String name, T value)
        {
            Name = name;
            Value = value;
        }
 
        #endregion
 
        #region Public Properties
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Gets or sets the name of the Setting.
        /// </summary>
        public String Name
        {
            get { return m_name; }
            set { m_name = value; }
        }
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Gets or sets the value of the Setting.
        /// </summary>
        public T Value
        {
            get { return m_value; }
            set { m_value = value; }
        }
 
        #endregion
 
        #region Private Fields
 
        private T m_value;      // The value of the setting.
        private String m_name;  // The name of the setting.
 
        #endregion
    }
}
 

It's pretty obvious what that class does.
Now I'm looking for a way that if I read the value of the Type attrbute in a XML document, how I can use that string to do this:

Setting<Type> x = new Setting<Type>(name, value);

where Type is the string value from the type attribute in the XML document.

[GaryTexmo]

I feel like we had a thread about this a while back but I can't remember what the outcome was... I'll try to take a look. I played around and found this in another thread here, posted long ago. I don't know if it'll help or not, but it does let you create a generic list from a type.

            Type theType = Type.GetType("System.Collections.Generic.List`1[System.String]");
            object o = Activator.CreateInstance(theType);
            Console.WriteLine(o.GetType());

[Airslash]

exactly what I was looking for :).
Haven't played around much with reflection yet, but I know it can do magic

[GaryTexmo]

Haha glad it helped!

I was mucking about with this and discovered a bit more...

            Type theType = Type.GetType("System.Collections.Generic.List`1[System.String]");
            object o = Activator.CreateInstance(theType);
            Console.WriteLine(o.GetType());
 
            MethodInfo addMethod = theType.GetMethod("Add");
            addMethod.Invoke(o, new object[] { "Item 1" });
            addMethod.Invoke(o, new object[] { "Item 2" });
 
            PropertyInfo countProperty = theType.GetProperty("Count");
            int count = (int)countProperty.GetValue(o, null);
            Console.WriteLine(count);

Obviously I'm not null checking... tsk tsk, bad!

I still can't figure out how to loop through the darn data yet...

[GaryTexmo]

There we go...

            List<string> test = new List<string>();
 
            Type theType = Type.GetType("System.Collections.Generic.List`1[System.String]");
            object o = Activator.CreateInstance(theType);
            Console.WriteLine(o.GetType());
 
            MethodInfo addMethod = theType.GetMethod("Add");
            addMethod.Invoke(o, new object[] { "Item 1" });
            addMethod.Invoke(o, new object[] { "Item 2" });
 
            PropertyInfo countProperty = theType.GetProperty("Count");
            int count = (int)countProperty.GetValue(o, null);
            Console.WriteLine(count);
 
            PropertyInfo itemProperty = theType.GetProperty("Item");
            for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(itemProperty.GetValue(o, new object[] { i }));
            }