David Mohundro - A simple lesson using type converters

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

I found myself writing the following code this evening:

public T GetItem<T>(string name)

    string result = node.SelectSingleNode(name).InnerText.Trim();

    return (T)GetConverter(typeof(T)).ConvertFromString(result);

private TypeConverter GetConverter(Type objectType)

    if (objectType.Equals(typeof(int)))

        return new Int32Converter();

    else if (objectType.Equals(typeof(bool)))

        return new BooleanConverter();

    else if (objectType.Equals(typeof(string)))

        return new StringConverter();

    else

        throw new ArgumentException("Does not support casting to " + objectType.Name);

Don't ever write code like this. Read the documentation which explicitly says that "you should never create an instance of a BooleanConverter". If you follow their advice, your code will become much cleaner. Like so:

public T GetItem<T>(string name)

    string result = node.SelectSingleNode(name).InnerText.Trim();

    return (T)TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(typeof(T)).ConvertFromString(result);

.NET | Programming

posted on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 8:39:58 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)

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