Get user-friendly name for generic type in C#

Question

Is there an easy way without writing a recursive method which will give a \'user friendly\' name for a generic type from the Type class?

E.g. For the fo

Answer 1

You can avoid writing a recursive method by calling the recursive method that's already provided for you:

static string GetTypeName(Type type)
{
    var codeDomProvider = CodeDomProvider.CreateProvider("C#");
    var typeReferenceExpression = new CodeTypeReferenceExpression(new CodeTypeReference(type));
    using (var writer = new StringWriter())
    {
        codeDomProvider.GenerateCodeFromExpression(typeReferenceExpression, writer, new CodeGeneratorOptions());
        return writer.GetStringBuilder().ToString();
    }
}

Note that this includes the type namespaces, but excludes the assembly references. For the type in your question, the result looks like this:

System.Collections.Generic.List>

It isn't clear to me whether that qualifies as "something like" List>.