Creating an object from from an ID (or name)

Question

I have an abstract class that a lot of child classes inherit:

  public abstract class CrawlerBase
    {
        public abstract void Process(string url);
            


        

Answer 1

As Redi pointed out you do call call Process on any instance since all derive from the same base class. You still have some repetitive code in your switch case which can be simplified if you move away from a switch (if/else) to a mapping construct.

Dictionary Types = new Dictionary
{
    { "Trial", typeof(Trials) },
    { "Coverage", typeof(Coverage) },
};

void Crawl()
{
    string itemType = "Trial";
    CrawlerBase crawler = (CrawlerBase)Activator.CreateInstance(Types[itemType]);
    crawler.Process("url");
}

You can do it also with delegates like Dennis if you put a factory method as value into your dictionary.