Dynamic object cast to type known at runtime only

Question

Situation: Type baseType known only at runtime. objectInstance is a child of type baseType objectInstance was retrieved from a call to a dyn

Answer 1

Casting to a type that's known only at Runtime seems to be a senseless operation for the compiler: since by definition it doesn't know the type until Runtime, there's no compile-time support for it so there's no benefit in doing so. If the object is used through Reflection, then the actual Type of the variable that holds the instance doesn't matter much - might as well be Object.

That doesn't mean it's not possible, it's just a bit cumbersome to do the cast. The language does allow us to write code that's only made aware of a given type at Runtime, using type-parametrised types!

The code in my example sets a very simple method to obtain an AdapterDelegate for a LibraryDelegate<TRunTimeType>, using information exclusively found at runtime. You'll notice the actual cast to TRunTimeType in the AdapterDelegateHelper.Adapter<TRuntimeType>.adapter method. Look at the Main code to see how easy this is to use:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.IO;
using System.Reflection;

namespace ConsoleApplication2
{
    // Start by declaring a delegate that looks exactly like the library method you want to call, but with TRuntimeType in place of the actual type
    public delegate void LibraryDelegate<TRuntimeType>(TRuntimeType param, Int32 num, String aStr);
    // Declare an "adapter" delegate that uses "Object" in place of TRuntimeType for every relevant parameter
    public delegate void AdapterDelegate(Object param, Int32 num, String aStr);

    public static class AdapterDelegateHelper
    {
        private class Adapter<TRuntimeType>
        {
            private readonly LibraryDelegate<TRuntimeType> libDelegate;

            public Adapter(Object LibraryInstance, String MethodName)
            {
                Type libraryType = LibraryInstance.GetType();
                Type[] methodParameters = typeof(LibraryDelegate<TRuntimeType>).GetMethod("Invoke").GetParameters().Select(p => p.ParameterType).ToArray();
                MethodInfo libMethod = libraryType.GetMethod(MethodName, methodParameters);
                libDelegate = (LibraryDelegate<TRuntimeType>) Delegate.CreateDelegate(typeof(LibraryDelegate<TRuntimeType>), LibraryInstance, libMethod);
            }

            // Method that pricecly matches the adapter delegate
            public void adapter(Object param, Int32 num, String aStr)
            {
                // Convert all TRuntimeType parameters.
                // This is a true conversion!
                TRuntimeType r_param = (TRuntimeType)param;

                // Call the library delegate.
                libDelegate(r_param, num, aStr);
            }
        }

        public static AdapterDelegate MakeAdapter(Object LibraryInstance, String MethodName, Type runtimeType)
        {
            Type genericType = typeof(Adapter<>);
            Type concreteType = genericType.MakeGenericType(new Type[] { runtimeType });
            Object obj = Activator.CreateInstance(concreteType, LibraryInstance, MethodName);
            return (AdapterDelegate)Delegate.CreateDelegate(typeof(AdapterDelegate), obj, concreteType.GetMethod("adapter"));
        }
    }

    // This class emulates a runtime-identified type; I'll only use it through reflection
    class LibraryClassThatIOnlyKnowAboutAtRuntime
    {
        // Define a number of oberloaded methods to prove proper overload selection
        public void DoSomething(String param, Int32 num, String aStr)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("This is the DoSomething overload that takes String as a parameter");
            Console.WriteLine("param={0}, num={1}, aStr={2}", param, num, aStr);
        }

        public void DoSomething(Int32 param, Int32 num, String aStr)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("This is the DoSomething overload that takes Integer as a parameter");
            Console.WriteLine("param={0}, num={1}, aStr={2}", param, num, aStr);
        }

        // This would be the bad delegate to avoid!
        public void DoSomething(Object param, Int32 num, String aStr)
        {
            throw new Exception("Do not call this method!");
        }
    }

    class Program
    {

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Type castToType = typeof(string);
            Type libraryTypeToCall = typeof(LibraryClassThatIOnlyKnowAboutAtRuntime);

            Object obj = Activator.CreateInstance(libraryTypeToCall);

            AdapterDelegate ad1 = AdapterDelegateHelper.MakeAdapter(obj, "DoSomething", castToType);
            ad1("param", 7, "aStr");

            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}