Java to C#: Extends in Generic

android, c#, java, xamarin.android

Solution

It's adding a constraint to the type parameter. It's analogous to the `where` clause in C#.

In Java, you have:

public class BalloonOverlayView<Item extends OverlayItem> extends FrameLayout

Where `Item` is a type parameter that must subclass or implement type `OverlayItem`. In C# this would be written as:

public class BalloonOverlayView<Item> : FrameLayout where Item : OverlayItem

You can see how the constraint is moved to the end, but otherwise analogous. It is very much common practice in C# to name type parameters prefixed with a `T`, so I would recommend the name `TItem` like so:

public class BalloonOverlayView<TItem> : FrameLayout where TItem : OverlayItem

This helps make clear the pretty important distinction between type parameters and ordinary types.

For a discussion on when you'd want to use type constraints like this, I go into this at length in a previous answer.

Problem

I am trying to convert this Java (Android) code to c# (MonoDroid) but I don't understand the `<Item extends OverlayItem>` ``` public class BalloonOverlayView<Item extends OverlayItem> extends FrameLayout ```

Original source

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