Is there a way to determine if a generic type is built from a specific generic type definition?

Question

I\'ve got a generic method:

Func, bool> CreateFunction()

where T can be any number of diff

Answer 1

You could do something like

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Example<IDictionary<int, string>>.IsDictionary();

        Example<SortedDictionary<int, string>>.IsDictionary();

        Example<Dictionary<int, string>>.IsDictionary();

        Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

public class Example<T>
{
    public static void IsDictionary()
    {
        if (typeof(T).GetInterface(typeof(IDictionary<,>).Name) != null || typeof(T).Name.Contains("IDictionary"))
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Is IDictionary");
        }
        else
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Not IDictionary");
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

You can avoid using ugly and potentially risky type name string checking using the IsGenericType and GetGenericTypeDefinition members, as follows:

var type = typeof (T);
if (typeof (IDictionary).IsAssignableFrom(type))
{
    //non-generic dictionary
}
else if (type.IsGenericType &&
         type.GetGenericTypeDefinition() == typeof (IDictionary<,>))
{
    //generic dictionary interface
}
else if (type.GetInterfaces().Any(
            i => i.IsGenericType &&
                 i.GetGenericTypeDefinition() == typeof (IDictionary<,>)))
{
    //implements generic dictionary
}

Answer 3

The easy way is just this:

Type iDict = null;
if (typeof(T).GetGenericTypeDefinition() == typeof(IDictionary<,>))
    iDict = typeof(T);
else
    iDict = typeof(T).GetInterface(typeof(IDictionary<,>).Name);
if (iDict != null)
{
    var genericParams = iDict.GetGenericArguments();
    Type tKey = genericParams[0], tValue = genericParams[1];
}

Note that this will not work (throws an exception) if T implements more than one IDictionary<,> interface, but that will probably be fine for your purposes.

For the sake of completeness, here's an implementation that will work on types with multiple IDictionary<,> interfaces by using the first one:

Type iDict = t.GetType().GetInterfaces()
              .Where(t => t.IsGenericType
               && t.GetGenericTypeDefinition() == typeof(IDictionary<,>))
              .FirstOrDefault();
if (iDict != null)
{
    var genericParams = iDict.GetGenericArguments();
    Type tKey = genericParams[0], tValue = genericParams[1];
}

Note that in this second routine t is an object, whereas T is a type in the first routine.

Answer 4

I think that if you call Type.GetGenericTypeDefinition() that should return the "base" generic type used to construct the concrete Type.

Note that just comparing this to IDictionary<,> is likely not enough, because if someone passes in an instance of Dictionary<,> I assume you would want to use that, as well. You could either check to see if the Type implements IDictionary<,> or you might be able to call Type.IsAssignableFrom(), although based on the doc I'm not sure how well this would work with generic Types.