I have a generic class which can be serialized:
MyOwnGenericClass<T> So I want to deserialize it and if T is a String instance handle it, in another case I want to throw an exception.
How to know type of generic contains in MyOwnGenericClass<T> while deserializing? To what class I have to cast following code?
new BinaryFormatter().Deserialize(fileStrieam); That's really easy. Just use object like so:
object obj = new BinaryFormatter().Deserialize(fileStrieam); and then do what you said you would do:
if (!(obj is MyOwnGenericClass<string>)) throw new Exception("It was something other than MyOwnGenericClass<string>"); else { MyOwnGenericClass<string> asMyOwn_OfString = obj as MyOwnGenericClass<string>; // do specific stuff with it asMyOwn.SpecificStuff(); } So you're not checking if T is a string. You're checking more than that: You're checking if obj is a MyOwnGenericClass< string >. Nobody said it will always be a MyOwnGenericClass< something > and our only headache is to find what that something is.
You can send bools, strings, ints, primitive arrays of int, even a StringBuilder. And then there's your entourage: you could send MyOwnGenericClass< int >, MyOwnGenericClass< string > (and this is the only one you accept).
var test = new MyGenericType<string>(); var genericTypes = test.GetType().GetGenericArguments(); if (genericTypes.Length == 1 && genericTypes[0] == typeof(string)) { // Do deserialization } else { throw new Exception(); } You can use Type.GetGenericArguments() to get the actual values of generic arguments a type was created with at runtime:
class MyGeneric<TValue> {} object stringValue = new MyGeneric<string>(); object intValue = new MyGeneric<int>(); // prints True Console.WriteLine(stringValue.GetType().GetGenericArguments()[0] == typeof(string)); // prints False Console.WriteLine(intValue.GetType().GetGenericArguments()[0] == typeof(string)); 