How to cast implicitly on a reflected method call

Question

I have a class Thing that is implicitly castable from a string. When I call a method with a Thing parameter directly the cast from s

Answer 1

In this specific case you can make the conversion through the array type, that is

showThingReflected.Invoke(this, new Thing[] {"foo"});

but that's a kind of "cheating". In general, you cannot expect the Invoke to consider your user-defined implicit operator. This conversion must be inferred compile-time.

Answer 2

Found an answer which uses a TypeConverter (as Saeed mentions)
Seems to do the job.

TypeConverter For Implicit Conversion when using reflection

Answer 3

The trick is to realize that the compiler creates a special static method called op_Implicit for your implicit conversion operator.

object arg = "foo";

// Program.showThing(Thing t)
var showThingReflected = GetType().GetMethod("showThing");

// typeof(Thing)
var paramType = showThingReflected.GetParameters()
                                  .Single()
                                  .ParameterType; 

// Thing.implicit operator Thing(string s)
var converter = paramType.GetMethod("op_Implicit", new[] { arg.GetType() });

if (converter != null)
    arg = converter.Invoke(null, new[] { arg }); // Converter exists: arg = (Thing)"foo";

// showThing(arg)
showThingReflected.Invoke(this, new[] { arg });