Passing just a type as a parameter in C#

Question

Hypothetically it\'d be handy for me to do this:

foo.GetColumnValues(dm.mainColumn, int)
foo.GetColumnValues(dm.mainColumn, string)

where t

Answer 1

There are two common approaches. First, you can pass System.Type

object GetColumnValue(string columnName, Type type)
{
    // Here, you can check specific types, as needed:

    if (type == typeof(int)) { // ...

This would be called like: int val = (int)GetColumnValue(columnName, typeof(int));

The other option would be to use generics:

T GetColumnValue(string columnName)
{
    // If you need the type, you can use typeof(T)...

This has the advantage of avoiding the boxing and providing some type safety, and would be called like: int val = GetColumnValue(columnName);