Check if Object is Dictionary or List

Question

Working with .NET 2 in mono, I\'m using a basic JSON library that returns nested string, object Dictionary and lists.

I\'m writing a mapper to map this

Answer 1

If you just need to detect the object is List/Dictionary or not, you can use myObject.GetType().IsGenericType && myObject is IEnumerable

Here is some example:

var lst = new List();
var dic = new Dictionary();
string s = "Hello!";
object obj1 = new { Id = 10 };
object obj2 = null;

// True
Console.Write(lst.GetType().IsGenericType && lst is IEnumerable);
// True
Console.Write(dic.GetType().IsGenericType && dic is IEnumerable);
// False
Console.Write(s.GetType().IsGenericType && s is IEnumerable);
// False
Console.Write(obj1.GetType().IsGenericType && obj1 is IEnumerable);
// NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of 
// an object, so you need to check for null cases too
Console.Write(obj2.GetType().IsGenericType && obj2 is IEnumerable);