Objective-C converting to C#: How can I use a .plist with multiple types in C# if Dictionary is strongly-typed?

Question

The question is a bit complicated so I will try and explain. I have a custom .plist (XML Property List) file I created with Xcode. Within it is many different types of data: NSDictionary, NSArray, NSString, BOOL, etc.

Here's an example:

In my code I can quickly obtain an NSDictionary of this entire file without knowing an data types using the following code (this is ARC code by the way). The only data types that I DO know of is that all of the keys are strings, but the values can be anything I've shown above:

+ (NSDictionary *)configDictionary
{
    collectorstemplateAppDelegate *appDelegate = (collectorstemplateAppDelegate*)
           [[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate];
    NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] 
           pathForResource:appDelegate.currentPlist ofType:@"plist"];
    NSDictionary *dict = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:path];
    return dict;
}

What I am trying to do is to accomplish the same thing on C#. I'd like to take these plists and move them to my Windows Phone phone apps, keeping the same structure. I realize that I will need to write some additional code to handle the XML behind the file, but you get the idea.... I want a Dictionary or HashTable or Collection of something similar to what I've done above, without knowing the types of the values.

Obviously in my case something like Dictionary<string, string> isn't going to work for me.

Any help would be great.

Answer 1

Answering my own question here but looking for validation....

Would Dictionary<string, object> work? Because I know the key is a string, I would just need to cast the value to the appropriate type, correct?

int appleID = (int) plistDict["appleid"];

If this is correct or incorrect, someone please let me know.

Answer 2

Hashtable is a non-generic version of Dictionary. In other words it doesn't require you to specify the types it deals with, and you can cash like you would in Objective-C.