Generics in the .NET Framwork allow you to work with generic types without having to specify a data type until the class is instantiated.
Generics are useful, in that you may have a class that you don’t want to limit the functionality to a certain data type. For example, you may have a class that can compare 2 integers, or it could also compare 2 strings. Instead of creating 2 different classes and methods, you can create one generic class that handles both operations.
Let’s say we have a class like the one below, MyClass. We can define the class as generic by adding <>, for example <T> where T represents the generic type. The class contains one property, _t. We have one method, Display, which will return the value of _t:
class MyClass<T>
{
private T _t;
public MyClass(T t)
{
_t = t;
}
public string Display()
{
return String.Format("The value provided is: {0}. The type you provided is: {1}", _t, typeof(T));
}
}
Now, if we want to use this class, we would instantiate it like below:
MyClass<int> i = new MyClass<int>(5);
Console.WriteLine(i.Display());
MyClass<string> s = new MyClass<string>("five");
Console.WriteLine(s.Display());
This produces:
As can be seen, the first instance is an integer and the second is a string. Our generic class can handle both data types.
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