Generic type conversion FROM string

Solution 1:

I am not sure whether I understood your intentions correctly, but let's see if this one helps.

public class TypedProperty<T> : Property where T : IConvertible
{
    public T TypedValue
    {
        get { return (T)Convert.ChangeType(base.Value, typeof(T)); }
        set { base.Value = value.ToString();}
    }
}

Solution 2:

lubos hasko's method fails for nullables. The method below will work for nullables. I didn't come up with it, though. I found it via Google: http://web.archive.org/web/20101214042641/http://dogaoztuzun.com/post/C-Generic-Type-Conversion.aspx Credit to "Tuna Toksoz"

Usage first:

TConverter.ChangeType<T>(StringValue);  

The class is below.

public static class TConverter
{
    public static T ChangeType<T>(object value)
    {
        return (T)ChangeType(typeof(T), value);
    }

    public static object ChangeType(Type t, object value)
    {
        TypeConverter tc = TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(t);
        return tc.ConvertFrom(value);
    }

    public static void RegisterTypeConverter<T, TC>() where TC : TypeConverter
    {

        TypeDescriptor.AddAttributes(typeof(T), new TypeConverterAttribute(typeof(TC)));
    }
}

Solution 3:

For many types (integer, double, DateTime etc), there is a static Parse method. You can invoke it using reflection:

MethodInfo m = typeof(T).GetMethod("Parse", new Type[] { typeof(string) } );

if (m != null)
{
    return m.Invoke(null, new object[] { base.Value });
}