Pass An Instantiated System.Type as a Type Parameter for a Generic Class

Robert_C_Barth_9209 0
Viewed 99511

The title is kind of obscure. What I want to know is if this is possible:

string typeName = <read type name from somwhere>;
Type myType = Type.GetType(typeName);

MyGenericClass<myType> myGenericClass = new MyGenericClass<myType>();

Obviously, MyGenericClass is described as:

public class MyGenericClass<T>

Right now, the compiler complains that 'The type or namespace 'myType' could not be found." There has got to be a way to do this.

generics .net c#
6 Answers

You can't do this without reflection. However, you can do it with reflection. Here's a complete example:

using System;
using System.Reflection;

public class Generic<T>
{
    public Generic()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("T={0}", typeof(T));
    }
}

class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        string typeName = "System.String";
        Type typeArgument = Type.GetType(typeName);

        Type genericClass = typeof(Generic<>);
        // MakeGenericType is badly named
        Type constructedClass = genericClass.MakeGenericType(typeArgument);

        object created = Activator.CreateInstance(constructedClass);
    }
}

Note: if your generic class accepts multiple types, you must include the commas when you omit the type names, for example:

Type genericClass = typeof(IReadOnlyDictionary<,>);
Type constructedClass = genericClass.MakeGenericType(typeArgument1, typeArgument2);
user_226560

Unfortunately no there is not. Generic arguments must be resolvable at Compile time as either 1) a valid type or 2) another generic parameter. There is no way to create generic instances based on runtime values without the big hammer of using reflection.

JaredPar_232830

If you know what types will be passed you can do this without reflection. A switch statement would work. Obviously, this would only work in a limited number of cases, but it'll be much faster than reflection.

public class Type1 { }

public class Type2 { }

public class Generic<T> { }

public class Program
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        var typeName = nameof(Type1);

        switch (typeName)
        {
            case nameof(Type1):
                var type1 = new Generic<Type1>();
                // do something
                break;
            case nameof(Type2):
                var type2 = new Generic<Type2>();
                // do something
                break;
        }
    }
}
user_12129940

In this snippet I want to show how to create and use a dynamically created list. For example, I'm adding to the dynamic list here.

void AddValue<T>(object targetList, T valueToAdd)
{
    var addMethod = targetList.GetType().GetMethod("Add");
    addMethod.Invoke(targetList, new[] { valueToAdd } as object[]);
}

var listType = typeof(List<>).MakeGenericType(new[] { dynamicType }); // dynamicType is the type you want
var list = Activator.CreateInstance(listType);

AddValue(list, 5);

Similarly you can invoke any other method on the list.

user_12343740
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