Return strong type (like typed dataset)

[fsx]

I have a class that accepts objects via an add method and then stores them in a list of objects:

public class tagBuilder
private _store as Dictionary(Of String, Object)
 
public sub Add(tagName as string, tagValue as object)
_store.add(tagName, tagValue)
end sub
 
end class
 

I would like to add some methods that allow me to return a strong type (string, int, date) based on the specified tag. Is this possible? Doesn't a typed dataset do something similar based on the column datatype?

public function GetTag(tagName as string)
' pseudocode: 
' - search _store for tagName
' - get value into object
' - cast object to actual type and return
end function
 

[fsx]

Sorry, I think i've done a bad job of describing this.

I'm wondering if I need code generation to create me methods that will return expected tags. for example, a string "username" tag would be returned with .GetUserName() [ as string] and a date "dob" tag would be returned with .GetDob() [ as date].

The original idea was to get a strong typed back instead of an object and then cast it to a type.