Is there a way to define C# strongly-typed aliases of existing primitive types like `string` or `int`?

Question

Perhaps I am demonstrating my ignorance of some oft-used feautre of C# or the .NET framework, but I would like to know if there is a natively-supported way to create a type alias like EmailAddress which aliases string but such that I can extend it with my own methods like bool Validate()?

I know of the using x = Some.Type; aliases but these are not global nor do they provide type safety, i.e. one could swap out an ordinary string for the using alias in the current file. I would like my EmailAddress to be its own type, independent and not interchangeable with the string type that it shadows.

My current solution is to generate public sealed partial EmailAddress : IEquatable<EmailAddress>, IXmlSerializable classes with a T4 template generating the boilerplate implicit string conversion operators and other such things. This is fine with me for now and gives me a lot of flexibility but at the back of my mind it seems silly that I have to generate such copious amounts of boilerplate code to do something as simple as creating a strong type alias.

Maybe this is not possible other than with code generation, but I am curious if others have attempted something similar with their designs and what your experiences have been. If nothing else, perhaps this could serve as a good use-case for such an alias feature in a hypothetical future version of C#. Thanks!

EDIT: The real value that I want out of this is to be able to get type safety with primitive types that represent different types/formats for data. For instance, an EmailAddress and a SocialSecurityNumber and a PhoneNumber, all of which use string as their underlying type but which are not interchangeable types in and of themselves. I think this gets you much more readable and self-documenting code, not to mention added benefits of more method overload possibilities that are less ambiguous.

Answer 1

Does the System.Net.Mail.MailAddress class fit your needs, or at least "help"?

EDIT: It's not explicitly IEquatable or ISerializable, but you could easily enough add those in your own wrapper.

Answer 2

Some background on why string is sealed:

From http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0501091 :

Rory: Hey Jay, you mind if I ask you a couple questions? I'm already curious about some things. First of all, and this was brought up at one of the MSDN events I did this week, why is String sealed? Note: for VB.NET programmers, Sealed = NotInheritable.

Jay: Because we do a lot of magic tricks in String to try and make sure we can optimize for things like comparisons, to make them as fast as we possibly can. So, we're stealing bits off of pointers and other things in there to mark things up. Just to give you an example, and I didn't know this when I started, but if a String has a hyphen or an apostrophe in it [then] it sorts differently than if it just has text in it, and the algorithm for sorting it if you have a hyphen or an apostrophe if you're doing globally-aware sorting is pretty complicated, so we actually mark whether or not the string has that type of behavior in it.

Rory: So, what you're saying is that in the string world, if you didn't seal String there would be a whole lot of room for wreaking a lot of havoc if people were trying to subclass it.

Jay: Exactly. It would change the entire layout of the object, so we wouldn't be able to play the tricks that we play that pick up speed.

Here is the CodeProject article that you probably have seen before:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/expandSealed.aspx

So yeah, implicit operator is your only solution.

Answer 3

I guess I do not get why you want to have both strong types AND implicit string conversion at the same time. For me, one rules out the other.

I tried to solve the same problem for ints (you mention int in the title, but not in the question). I found that declaring an enum gives you a type-safe integer which needs to be explicitly cast from/to int.

Update

Enums may not be intended for open sets, but can still be used in such a way. This sample is from a compilation experiment to distinguish between the ID columns of several tables in a database:

    enum ProcID { Unassigned = 0 }
    enum TenderID { Unassigned = 0 }

    void Test()
    {
        ProcID p = 0;
        TenderID t = 0; <-- 0 is assignable to every enum
        p = (ProcID)3;  <-- need to explicitly convert

        if (p == t)  <-- operator == cannot be applied
            t = -1;  <-- cannot implicitly convert

        DoProc(p);
        DoProc(t);   <-- no overloaded method found
        DoTender(t);
    }

    void DoProc(ProcID p)
    {
    }

    void DoTender(TenderID t)
    {
    }

Answer 4

I think you want to use extension methods. They allow you to extend a classes functionality without creating a new derived type.

Answer 5

If you look at the .NET Framework System.Uri is the closest example that is similar to an email address. In .NET the pattern is to wrap something in a class and add constraints that way.

Adding strong typing that adds additional constraints to simple types is an interesting language feature that I believe some functional language has. I can't recall the name of the language which would let you add dimensional units such as feet to your values and do a dimensional analysis on your equations to ensure that the units matched.

Answer 6

It seems you have at least a reasonable C# knoledgde so my answer may seem stupid, but what you want is called "type hierarchy" and the guys who coded the String class wanted to prevent you from using this "OO feature" so they made String class sealed, that's why you won't be able to do what you want. The best approach is this you are on now: Make your own type and an implicit convertion to String.