.NET Class property as object, such as System.String

Question

I'm not sure if this is possible, or even how to properly word this.

I am creating a new webAPI that I want to use with an offline app. The app connects to the api (before going offline) and pulls down a list of fields to generate a dynamic form. I want to supply a list of fields to the client. In simple terms this might be id and description .

However, to generate the form exactly as I want it, I might want to supply a field "type" such as System.DateTime or System.String . Is it possible to do this?

In pseudocode this might be:

public class EntityType
{
    public Guid EntityTypeId { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }
    public Object Type { get; set; }
}

I might then want to create an EntityType like this:

EntityType entityType = new EntityType { 
    EntityTypeId = Guid.NewGuid(),
    Description = "Visit Date",
    Type = System.DateTime
};

It's the Type = System.DateTime I want to be able to achieve. I can then have my form generate a field where the type is date. The same might apply for strings for example.

Answer 1

To represent a type , use Type :

 public Type Type { get; set; }

...

Type = typeof(DateTime)

However! It is unlikely that this will work with webapi, since Type is not interchangeable between platforms.

Another option is an enum of your expected types; you might find that TypeCode has everything you want, but you could also simply create your own enum of known types.