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Is there possible to specific type of Generic Type in C# [duplicate]

I have built myself a generic collection class which is defined like this.
public class StatisticItemHits<T>{...}
This class can be used with int and string values only. However this
public class StatisticItemHits<T> where T : string, int {...}
won't compile. What am I doing wrong?

The type restriction is meant to be used with Interfaces. Your sample suggests that you want to allow classes that inherit from int and string, which is kinda nonsense. I suggest you design an interface that contains the methods you'll be using in your generic class StatisticItemHits, and use that interface as restriction. However I don't really see your requirements here, maybe you could post some more details about your scenario?

You could make StatisticItemHits<T> an abstract class and create two subclasses:
StatisticItemHitsInt : StatisticItemHits<int>{}
StatisticItemHitsString : StatisticItemHits<string>{}
That way there can only be an int and string-representation of StatisticItemHits

As others have said, you cannot use type restrictions in this way. What you can do is to specialise from your base type as follows:
public class StatisticItemHits <T> { }
public class StringStatisticItemHits : StatisticItemHits<string> { }
public class IntegerStatisticItemHits : StatisticItemHits<int> { }
Also, as your base class is generic, you won't be able to use this to polymorphically. If you need to do this make StatisticItemHits implement an interface and use this to reference instances. Something like:
public class StatisticItemHits <T> : IStaticticItemHits { }
public interface IStatisticItemHits { }

You cannot restrict it to string and int from the where clause. You can check it in the constructor, but that is probably not a good place to be checking. My approach would be to specialize the class and abstract the class creation into a (semi-)factory pattern:
class MyRestrictedGeneric<T>
{
protected MyRestrictedGeneric() { }
// Create the right class depending on type T
public static MyRestrictedGeneric<T> Create<T>()
{
if (typeof(T) == typeof(string))
return new StringImpl() as MyRestrictedGeneric<T>;
if (typeof(T) == typeof(int))
return new IntImpl() as MyRestrictedGeneric<T>;
throw new InvalidOperationException("Type not supported");
}
// The specialized implementation are protected away
protected class StringImpl : MyRestrictedGeneric<string> { }
protected class IntImpl : MyRestrictedGeneric<int> { }
}
This way you can limit the class's usage to just string and int internally inside your class.

Given that you only have two types here I would go down an OO route here instead and just have two classes for the two types.
Generics are best used where the circumstances in which they can be applied are, you know, generic. They're a lot less use in circumstances like this.
You can restrict to struct or class types only, and I do think that there need to be numeric or operator based restrictions (e.g. must support +=)
Int and string are really quite different, certainly more different than int and double. It wouldn't make much sense for a generic class to support the immutable reference type of string and the value type of int without also supporting other types more similar to either of them.

Not possible to do this with 'where'. You can't do an 'or'.

Simply use:
where TSource : IEquatable<string>

Checking this:
https://riptutorial.com/csharp/example/8137/where
hybrid value/reference type
Occasionally it is desired to restrict type arguments to those
available in a database, and these will usually map to value types and
strings. As all type restrictions must be met, it is not possible to
specify where T : struct or string (this is not valid syntax). A
workaround is to restrict type arguments to IConvertible which has
built in types of "... Boolean, SByte, Byte, Int16, UInt16, Int32,
UInt32, Int64, UInt64, Single, Double, Decimal, DateTime, Char, and
String." ...
public class Cup<T> where T : IConvertible
{
// ...
}
I solved the same problem you have with this solution, see my working example here:
static void Main()
{
var r1 = TryTest<int>(123); //Unmanaged supported
var r2 = TryTest<DateTime>(DateTime.Now); //Unmanaged supported
var r3 = TryTest<double>(123.55); //Unmanaged supported
var r4 = TryTest<string>("Homer Simpson"); //String supported
}
public static List<T> TryTest<T>(T someValue) where T : IConvertible
{
var list = new List<T>(); // Just for the sake of the example, a list of <T>
list.Add(someValue); //Add it...
return list;
}
The result will be a List of each type, string included. (Use watch to confirm)

C# Dictionary of generic classes

I am new to C#. I am trying to implement a Dictionary in C# whose Java-equivalent is:
HashMap<string, Variable<?>> dictionary
Here is the detailed Java version of what I'm trying to do: Java how to manage user-defined variables
In C# so far I have something like this:
interface IVariable { }
public class Variable<T> : IVariable
{
public T myValue { get; set; }
}
Dictionary<string, IVariable> vars = new Dictionary<string, IVariable>();
Then I try to do this:
Variable<int> age = new Variable<int>();
age.myValue = 12;
vars.Add("age", age);
IVariable theVar;
if (vars.TryGetValue("age", out theVar) {
Console.WriteLine("fetched age is " + theVar.myValue);
}
I run into trouble in the last line because the compiler doesn't recognize the myValue member of a theVar because it is an IVariable.
In this simple example maybe I could declare theVar to be a Variable<int> instead of an IVariable but I haven't tried it because it would require a priori knowledge about what kind of variable I'm fetching from the dictionary and I might not always have that knowledge.
I wouldn't mind if myValue were an inherited/abstract property (if there is such a thing), since every Variable will have a property named myValue (each will differ in type but not in name). In that case I guess I could make IVariable an abstract class rather than an interface, but then I still run into trouble as far as what to put for the type of myValue.
Could I do a cast of theVar into something using as by first checking its type with is? I'm not sure if that would work or is even possible.
I've looked at these posts for guidance (especially the second one):
Wildcard equivalent in C# generics
C# Generics: wildcards
However, my situation is still slightly different than the second example above because that example has an abstract method that is returning a void whereas I wish to have my variables return non-void generic values.
Thanks for any help.

C# has dynamic. You can create Dictionary<string, dynamic>
Or you can use object (boxing/unboxing) Dictionary<string, object>
Or you can get generic type from class
class MyClass<TDicValue>
{
Dictionary<strint, TDicValue> myDictionary;
}

I had this same problem where I had 20 slightly different types and I had to keep dictionaries on. I wanted to organize them in a list.
The problem was the same, selecting the right kind from the list with reflection or strings lacked the ability to provide a type to return to. #skrilmps answer is correct, but packing and and unpacking was at best unreliable without a lot (metric ton) of ugly messy code.
While unity does support dynamics in 2020, this doesn't exactly work with what i am doing unless I make like everything dynamic safe and that's shamble coding, not extensible or maintainable, and just sounds like a general nightmare.
I personally feel that I am an inadequate programmer after years of trying to learn and still not having my efforts provide a productive return or product of note, so i cannot claim the answer being mine, but in my research on the proper solution to this problem i found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7qwuFnyIpM
In here he says basically if you add an interface to your similar classes that are intended for use in a variety of different lists, that you can instead make a list of that type of interface. I would assume dictionary as well, and then you can add any kind of class implementing this interface to this singular interface type defined list.

I tried using boxing/unboxing and came up with this solution. It appears to work... so far. But it doesn't seem very safe.
public interface Variable
{
object getValue();
void setValue(object value);
Type myType();
}
public class Variable<T>: Variable
{
private T myValue;
public object getValue()
{
return myValue;
}
public void setValue(object value)
{
myValue = (T)value;
}
public Type myType() { return myValue.GetType(); }
}
Dictionary<string, Variable> vars = new Dictionary<string, Variable>();
Variable<int> age = new Variable<int>();
age.setValue(21);
vars.Add("age", age);
Variable theAgeVar;
vars.TryGetValue("age", out theAgeVar);
Console.WriteLine("age = " + theAgeVar.getValue());
Variable<double> height = new Variable<double>();
height.setValue(5.9);
Variable theHeightVar;
vars.TryGetValue("age", out theHeightVar);
Debug.Log("height = " + theHeightVar.getValue());
This prints:
age = 21
height = 5.9
One thing I do not like is that I had to make the return type of getValue() be an object. If I wanted myValue (which is of type T) to implement IComparable, for instance, then this information is lost when the boxing happens and the caller receives an object.

// The following should resolve the boxing problem and now is totally generic:
public interface IVariable<T>
{
T GetContent();
void SetContent(T value);
Type GetDataType();
}
public class Variable<T> : IVariable
{
private T content;
public T GetContent()
{
return content;
}
public void SetContent(T value)
{
content = value;
}
public Type GetDataType() { return GetType(); }
}
Dictionary<string, Variable<T>> variables = new Dictionary<string, Variable<T>>();

Creating a class or interface for a complex generic type

I am trying to create an alias for a type of list of list of object. Specifically, I want to shorten all the typing I have to do for this type:
IReadOnlyList<IReadOnlyList<MyObject>>
My attempt is demonstrated here:
using System.Collections.Generic;
namespace MyApp
{
class Program
{
public class MyObject
{
public static IMyCollection GetCollection()
{
var a = new List<MyObject>();
a.Add(new MyObject());
var b = new List<IReadOnlyList<MyObject>>();
b.Add(a.AsReadOnly());
return b.AsReadOnly();
}
}
public interface IMyCollection : IReadOnlyList<IReadOnlyList<MyObject>>
{
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var collection = MyObject.GetCollection();
}
}
}
Unfortunately, this won't compile. There error is:
Cannot implicitly convert type
'System.Collections.ObjectModel.ReadOnlyCollection<System.Collections.Generic.IReadOnlyList<MyApp.Program.MyObject>>'
to 'MyApp.Program.IMyCollection'.
An explicit conversion exists (are you missing a cast?)
OK, so I'm close. Perhaps explicitly casting? So I change the return statement in GetCollection to
return (IMyCollection)b.AsReadOnly();
That compiles, albeit with a resharper warning: Suspicious cast: there is no type in the solution which is inherited from both 'System.Collections.ObjectModel.ReadOnlyCollection>' and 'MyApp.Program.IMyCollection'
And at runtime, I get an invalid cast exception: Unable to cast object of type 'System.Collections.ObjectModel.ReadOnlyCollection1[System.Collections.Generic.IReadOnlyList1[MyApp.Program+MyObject]]' to type 'IMyCollection'.
OK, I can accept all that. I'm the last person to ask about stuff like covariance and contravariance and stuff like that. But surely there's a way to define and create an object with a short name to stand in for a really long named datatype.
How can I create a type with a really long name and cast to a type with a really short name?
UPDATE:
A co-worker suggested using a using statement.
using IMyCollection= System.Collections.Generic.IReadOnlyList<System.Collections.Generic.IReadOnlyList<MyApp.Program.MyObject>>;
While that would work, it then becomes necessary to do that in every file that uses IMyCollection. Not exactly what I would consider a solution to my goal.

How badly do you want this?
You can manually implement your own wrapper class.
public interface IMyCollection : IReadOnlyList<IReadOnlyList<MyObject>>
{
}
public class MyCollectionImpl : IMyCollection
{
private readonly IReadOnlyList<IReadOnlyList<MyObject>> _wrappedCollection;
public MyCollectionImpl(IReadOnlyList<IReadOnlyList<MyObject>> wrappedCollection)
{
_wrappedCollection = wrappedCollection;
}
public int Count
{
get
{
return _wrappedCollection.Count;
}
}
public IReadOnlyList<MyObject> this[int index]
{
get
{
return _wrappedCollection[index];
}
}
public IEnumerator<IReadOnlyList<MyObject>> GetEnumerator()
{
return _wrappedCollection.GetEnumerator();
}
System.Collections.IEnumerator System.Collections.IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
{
return _wrappedCollection.GetEnumerator();
}
}
Then you simply create an instance of this:
public class MyObject
{
public static IMyCollection GetCollection()
{
var a = new List<MyObject>();
a.Add(new MyObject());
var b = new List<IReadOnlyList<MyObject>>();
b.Add(a.AsReadOnly());
return new MyCollectionImpl(b.AsReadOnly());
}
}
This seems like a lot of extra work, but I would actually consider this a refactoring step.
I believe that the need to pass around types made up of complex set of generic parameters, is actually a bad smell in your code.
Ask yourself, what are you actually using IMyCollection for? Would you be able to add some specialized methods to this interface to make it easier to use?
Once you've created your own MyCollectionImpl class you can slowly add a number of methods to your IMyCollection interface to simplify it's usage. At some point, you might even get to the stage where you can stop exposing the <IReadonlyList<IReadonlyList<MyObject>> interface.

This has nothing to do with covariance. IMyCollection inherits from IReadOnlyList<IReadOnlyList<MyObject>> so you can cast an instance of IMyCollection to IReadOnlyList<IReadOnlyList<MyObject>> but not the other way around.
If you wanna have some custom conversions then you can create a type instead with the short name you want and declare a conversion from IReadOnlyList<IReadOnlyList<MyObject>> to your type using operator overloading. This really seems unnecessary and unusual way to use operator overloading but it's the only way to do what you want to achieve.

Implictly casting a dynamic object at runtime

Say I have the following code:
class MyField : DynamicObject
{
public dynamic Value { get; private set; }
public override bool TryConvert(ConvertBinder binder, out object result)
{
result = binder.Type == Value.GetType() ? Value : null;
return result != null;
}
public MyField(dynamic v)
{
Value = v;
}
}
// ...
public static class Program
{
static void doSomething(ulong address) { /* ... */ }
public void Main(string[] args)
{
dynamic field = new MyField((ulong)12345);
doSomething(field); // fails as field is not a ulong.
doSomething((ulong)field); // succeeds as field can be casted to a ulong.
ulong field2 = field; // also succeeds
}
}
Is there a way to get the first call to doSomething to succeed? I'm writing a library to read a particular file format which uses serialized C-style structures; reading the file entails reading these saved structure definitions and then "populating" them with the data contained in the rest of the file. I have a "structure" DynamicObject class (to support dot-notation access) and a "field" DynamicObject class, which is primarily necessary to hold additional information on the contents of the field; although I could probably get rid of it, it would make certain other operations more difficult. What I'd like to do is just "pretend" MyField is a certain type (well, technically just any built-in primitive or array of primitives, including 2D arrays) and implicitly convert it to that type. However, the runtime fails to try to implicitly convert field to the type required by the underlying method signature if field doesn't match the type required.

In the vein of Greg's answer, I came up with a solution that makes the runtime happy. It's not exactly what I was originally looking for, but it seems like the best solution.
Since I already have a large if-else tree in my source wherein I take an array of bytes and interpret them as an actual value-type, and indeed my current source does use an underlying generic MyField<T>, so this works fine. I can't recall why I wanted MyField to be dynamic in the first place.
Anyway, this is a modified solution.
class MyField<T>
{
public dynamic Value { get; private set; }
public MyField(dynamic v) { Value = v; }
public static implicit operator T(MyField field)
{
return (T)field.Value;
}
}
I keep coming back to wanting the runtime to just figure out what it needs to cast MyField to at runtime but I guess it's not that big of a deal. If anyone comes up with something better, let me know. I'm going to keep this question open in the meantime.

You potentially might want to look into Generics. Coupled with an interface may make the dynamic usage far more viable.
public interface Helper <TInput, TOutput>
{
<TOutput> DoSomething(TInput input);
}
So when you use this interface with a class, you'll implement your type for both input and output. Which will give you quite a bit of flexibility, which should avoid those cast that you mentioned earlier. A small example, I mean you could obviously adjust it based on needs but I still don't understand what you're trying to really do.

Typed<>/untyped design

I have an (existing) typed class of items:
Items<T>
T Value { get; }
T can be double, string or int.
I then have a class that has to hold several instances of Items. Within a single instance of this class, T is always the same. As it stands, the type actually contained is determined by a property and the container is not typed:
Data
DataType { get; set; }
Items<double>
double Value;
Items<string>
// ... and so on. Nasty stuff.
Ideally, of course, this would be
Data<T>
Items<T>
T value
Data instances are created from scratch in code, and can be loaded from a database. So of course a factory would be in our future, but what is the return type of the Create method?
Even worse, I need this:
DataCollection
// HERE'S THE PAIN: What's the type here?
List of Data<> instances with differing types
foreach (? data in someDataCollection)
if (thetypeof data is double)
doSomething();
else
doSomethingElse();
Now, I can solve this, but I can't see a CLEAN way to solve this.
My first issue is the declaration of DataCollection. What is the type of the list? List<object>, so it can hold Data<double> and Data<string>?

There actually is a clean way to solve this; you can use a Dictionary with keys of the data type and values which are of type generic Func<> . You then pass the type to your create method, which then looks up the Func<> to use in the Dictionary based on the type, and invokes that Func<> to create or process your object.
Since I am working from pseudo code, basically it would look something like the below; you can play with it and modify it to get it to serve your needs, but this is the basic idea.
First, create a parent class for all data objects; note that this class has a lookup dictionary for functions to invoke on various types, and note that it is abstract:
public abstract class Data
{
// A Lookup dictionary for processing methods
// Note this the functions just return something of type object; specialize as needed
private static readonly IDictionary<Type, Func<object, Data>> _processFunctions = new Dictionary
<Type, Func<object, Data>>()
{
{typeof(int), d => { return doSomethingForInt( (Data<int>) d); }},
{typeof(string), d => { return doSomethingForString( (Data<string>) d); }},
{typeof(double), d => { return doSomethingForDouble( (Data<double>) d); }},
};
// A field indicating the subtype; this will be used for lo
private readonly Type TypeOfThis;
protected Data(Type genericType)
{
TypeOfThis = genericType;
}
public Data Process()
{
return _processFunctions[this.TypeOfThis](this);
}
}
Now subclass Data with a generic type that can be instantiated:
class Data<T> : Data
{
// Set the type on the parent class
public Data() : base(typeof(T))
{
}
// You can convert this to a collection, etc. as needed
public T Items { get; set; }
public static Data<T> CreateData<T>()
{
return new Data<T>();
}
}
You can then create a DataCollection class using the parent type. Note the ProcessData() method; all it does now is loop over the elements and call Process() on each one:
class DataCollection
{
public IList<Data> List = new List<Data>();
public void ProcessData()
{
foreach (var d in List)
{
d.Process();
}
}
}
...and you're all set! Now you can invoke your DataCollection with different types of Data:
DataCollection dc = new DataCollection();
dc.List.Add(new Data<int>());
dc.List.Add(new Data<string>());
dc.List.Add(new Data<double>());
dc.ProcessData();

I think every time you need to do if-conditions on runtime data type, it means there's something wrong with the data structures. But every time I encounter situation like this, I have a hard time to solve it.
What I would try to do here is to wrap your primitive types into some kind of Adapters with conversion methods (possibly even implicit) and make all of them implement a common interface, let's say IDoSomething. Then, you can define the doSomething behaviors in IntWrapper, DoubleWrapper etc. separately. Then your DataCollection should be of type List<IDoSomething> and the loop can just call data.DoSomething() method from the interface.
Having implicit conversion allows you to use the collection in the natural way like data.Add(3) - you'll still be able to add the items without wrapping the privitives