In C#, How do you find out whether an Object is of a Generic Base Type

Question

As a part of writing of a code generation tool (client library for my classes), I found an interesting problem.

I have a set of classes: SomeClass : MyBaseClass<SomeClass> SomeOtherClass : SomeOtherBaseClass ClassC : SomeCompletelyOtherBaseClass<SomeClass>

All of MyBaseClass<T> , SomeOtherBaseClass and SomeCompletelyOtherBaseClass<T> inherit from the same base class, but I'm not interested in that one.

Also as the input for my code, I have a Reflected Type ( System.Type ).

What I want to find out is for my Reflected Type - which one of these generic base classes it inherits.

I know it's possible to use the IS operator, or IsAssignableFrom , but in this case I don't know what the generic type is.

So I can't just say myType.IsAssignableFrom(MyBaseClass<T>) , as I don't know about the T , all I have is MyBaseClass name.

What I want to get out of this is - be able to use it in a switch/case statement, saying that for all classes inheriting from MyBaseClass do this, for all inheriting from SomeCompletelyOtherBaseClass do that.

Any ideas?

I will however need to identify that the T is later down the line, so any additional input welcome.

Answer 1

Simple mockup:

namespace Program {

  class MyGeneric<T> { }

  class MyDerived : MyGeneric<String> { }

  class Program {
    public static void Main() {
      MyDerived item = new MyDerived ();
      Boolean isIt = typeof(MyGeneric<>).BaseType.IsAssignableFrom (item.GetType());
      Console.WriteLine (isIt); // Output: "True"

      foreach (Type type in item.GetType().BaseType.GetGenericArguments())
        Console.WriteLine(type.Name);
    }
  }
}