C# best way to call .ToString() on an object

Question

Hello,

How would you write a call to the .ToString() method on an object of type object that can be null. I currently do the following, but it's pretty long :

  myobject == null ? null : myobject.ToString()

Answer 1

If you use that specific type frequently in this way you could write a method GetString(object foo) which will return a string or null. This will save you some typing. Is there something similar to C++ templates in C#? If yes, you could apply that to the GetString() method, too.

Answer 2

One way to make the behaviour more encapsulated is to put it in an extension method:

public static class ObjectExtensions
{
    public static string NullSafeToString(this object input)
    {
        return  input == null ? null : input.ToString();
    }
}

Then you can call NullSafeToString on any object:

object myobject = null;
string temp = myobject.NullSafeToString();