extending Convert.ChangeType to produce user-defined types on request

Question

Given the class:

public class Foo
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

Is it possible to have a Foo instance created from a string thro

Answer 1

An implicit operator won't work here? If Foo is a class you can modify then I've used something like this in the past, which also allows you to compare Foo instances to a string.

public class Foo
{
  public string Name { get; set; }

  public static implicit operator Foo(string value)
  {
    return new Foo { Name = value };
  }
}

...
Foo foo = "fooTest";
Console.WriteLine("Foo name: {0}", foo.Name);
...

Edit: If you must use ChangeType then as far as I know you're out of luck. If you can modify the API to use a TypeConverter, you can use something like the following.

...
Type type = typeof(Foo);
object value = "one";

var converter = TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(type);
if (converter.CanConvertFrom(value.GetType()))
{
  object newObject = converter.ConvertFrom(value);
  Console.WriteLine("Foo value: {0}", newObject.ToString());
}
...

public class FooConverter : TypeConverter
{
  public override bool CanConvertFrom(ITypeDescriptorContext context, Type sourceType)
  {
    return sourceType == typeof(string);
  }

  public override object ConvertFrom(ITypeDescriptorContext context, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture, object value)
  {
    var name = value as string;
    if (name != null)
      return new Foo { Name = name };
    else
      return base.ConvertFrom(context, culture, value);
  }
}

[TypeConverter(typeof(FooConverter))]
public class Foo
{
  public string Name { get; set; }

  public override string ToString()
  {
    return Name;
  }
}