How to get the type of T from a member of a generic class or method?

Question

Let say I have a generic member in a class or method, so:

public class Foo
{
    public List Bar { get; set; }

    public void Baz()
    {         


        

Answer 1

Using 3dGrabber's solution:

public static T GetEnumeratedType<T>(this IEnumerable<T> _)
{
    return default(T);
}

//and now 

var list = new Dictionary<string, int>();
var stronglyTypedVar = list.GetEnumeratedType();

Answer 2

If you dont need the whole Type variable and just want to check the type you can easily create a temp variable and use is operator.

T checkType = default(T);

if (checkType is MyClass)
{}

Answer 3

Try

list.GetType().GetGenericArguments()

Answer 4

That's work for me. Where myList is some unknown kind of list.

IEnumerable myEnum = myList as IEnumerable;
Type entryType = myEnum.AsQueryable().ElementType;

Answer 5

You can get the type of "T" from any collection type that implements IEnumerable<T> with the following:

public static Type GetCollectionItemType(Type collectionType)
{
    var types = collectionType.GetInterfaces()
        .Where(x => x.IsGenericType 
            && x.GetGenericTypeDefinition() == typeof(IEnumerable<>))
        .ToArray();
    // Only support collections that implement IEnumerable<T> once.
    return types.Length == 1 ? types[0].GetGenericArguments()[0] : null;
}

Note that it doesn't support collection types that implement IEnumerable<T> twice, e.g.

public class WierdCustomType : IEnumerable<int>, IEnumerable<string> { ... }

I suppose you could return an array of types if you needed to support this...

Also, you might also want to cache the result per collection type if you're doing this a lot (e.g. in a loop).

Answer 6

This is how i did it

internal static Type GetElementType(this Type type)
{
        //use type.GenericTypeArguments if exist 
        if (type.GenericTypeArguments.Any())
         return type.GenericTypeArguments.First();

         return type.GetRuntimeProperty("Item").PropertyType);
}

Then call it like this

var item = Activator.CreateInstance(iListType.GetElementType());

OR

var item = Activator.CreateInstance(Bar.GetType().GetElementType());