C# generics: cast generic type to value type

Question

I have a generic class which saves value for the specified type T. The value can be an int, uint, double or float. Now I want to get the bytes of the value to encode it into an

Answer 1

If your only goal is to add the GetBytes method to these types, isn't it a much nicer solution to add them as extension methods like so:

public static class MyExtensions {
    public static byte[] GetBytes(this int value) {
        return BitConverter.GetBytes(value) ;
    }
    public static byte[] GetBytes(this uint value) {
        return BitConverter.GetBytes(value) ;
    }
    public static byte[] GetBytes(this double value) {
        return BitConverter.GetBytes(value) ;
    }
    public static byte[] GetBytes(this float value) {
        return BitConverter.GetBytes(value) ;
    }
}

If you really need you generic class for other purposes, just do the dirty "double typecast" like Eric mentioned where you typecast value to object first.

Answer 2

What would GenericClass<DateTime> do? Rather, it seems you have a discrete set of classes which know how to get their bytes, so make an abstract base class that does all of the common work, and then make 3 concrete class which override a method to specify the piece that changes between them:

public abstract class GenericClass<T>
{
    private T _value;

    public void SetValue(T value)
    {
        _value = value;
    }

    public byte[] GetBytes()
    {
        return GetBytesInternal(_value);
    }

    protected abstract byte[] GetBytesInternal(T value);
}

public class IntClass : GenericClass<int>
{
    protected override byte[] GetBytesInternal(int value)
    {
        return BitConverter.GetBytes(value);
    }
}

public class DoubleClass : GenericClass<double>
{
    protected override byte[] GetBytesInternal(double value)
    {
        return BitConverter.GetBytes(value);
    }
}

public class FloatClass : GenericClass<float>
{
    protected override byte[] GetBytesInternal(float value)
    {
        return BitConverter.GetBytes(value);
    }
}

This not only provides clean, strongly-typed implementations of your three known types, but leaves the door open for anyone else to subclass Generic<T> and provide an appropriate implementation of GetBytes.