Collection of generic types

Question

If I have a generic class:

public class MyClass 
{
  public T Value;
}

I want to instantiate several items such as...

Answer 1

Have your generic class inherit from a non-generic base, or implement a non-generic interface. Then you can have a collection of this type and cast within whatever code you use to access the collection's contents.

Here's an example.

public abstract class MyClass
{
    public abstract Type Type { get; }
}

public class MyClass : MyClass
{
    public override Type Type
    {
        get { return typeof(T); }
    }

    public T Value { get; set; }
}

// VERY basic illustration of how you might construct a collection
// of MyClass objects.
public class MyClassCollection
{
    private Dictionary _dictionary;

    public MyClassCollection()
    {
        _dictionary = new Dictionary();
    }

    public void Put(MyClass item)
    {
        _dictionary[typeof(T)] = item;
    }

    public MyClass Get()
    {
        return _dictionary[typeof(T)] as MyClass;
    }
}