How to unbox a C# object to dynamic type
.net, c#, casting, dynamictype, reflection
Solution
If you're using .NET 4 and C# 4, you can use `dynamic` for this:
dynamic obj = GetObject();
SomeMethod(obj);
Otherwise, you'll have to use reflection to find and invoke the right method. Overload resolution (for non-`dynamic` types) is performed at compile-time.
(Note that unless `TypeA` and `TypeB` are structs, you wouldn't be unboxing anyway...)
Problem
I'm trying to do something like this: ``` void someMethod(TypeA object) { ... } void someMethod(TypeB object) { ... } object getObject() { if (...) return new TypeA(); else return new TypeB(); } object obj = getObject(); (obj.GetType()) obj; // won't compile someMethod(obj); ``` Obviously I'm confused here. I know I could make this work by just writing out a conditional statement -- ``` if (obj.GetType() == typeof(TypeA)) obj = (TypeA)obj; else if (obj.GetType() == typeof(TypeB)) obj = (TypeB)obj; ``` -- but isn't there some way to do this at runtime? EDIT I agree it seems like perhaps not the best design choice, so here's the context. The point of the above code is Repository base class for Mongo DB. I want it to be able to handle different kinds of tables. So, someMethod() is actually remove; and TypeA and TypeB are ObjectID and Guid; the code at the bottom is part of a type-agnostic remove method that accepts the ID as a string; and getObject() is a method to parse the ID parameter.