Creating a generic method in C#

Question

I am trying to combine a bunch of similar methods into a generic method. I have several methods that return the value of a querystring, or null if that querystring does not exist or is not in the correct format. This would be easy enough if all the types were natively nullable, but I have to use the nullable generic type for integers and dates.

Here's what I have now. However, it will pass back a 0 if a numeric value is invalid, and that unfortunately is a valid value in my scenarios. Can somebody help me out? Thanks!

public static T GetQueryString<T>(string key) where T : IConvertible
{
    T result = default(T);

    if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString[key]) == false)
    {
        string value = HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString[key];

        try
        {
            result = (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T));  
        }
        catch
        {
            //Could not convert.  Pass back default value...
            result = default(T);
        }
    }

    return result;
}

Answer 1

What about this? Change the return type from T to Nullable<T>

public static Nullable<T> GetQueryString<T>(string key) where T : struct, IConvertible
        {
            T result = default(T);

            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString[key]) == false)
            {
                string value = HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString[key];

                try
                {
                    result = (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T));  
                }
                catch
                {
                    //Could not convert.  Pass back default value...
                    result = default(T);
                }
            }

            return result;
        }

Answer 2

I know, I know, but...

public static bool TryGetQueryString<T>(string key, out T queryString)

Answer 3

I like to start with a class like this class settings { public int X {get;set;} public string Y { get; set; } // repeat as necessary

 public settings()
 {
    this.X = defaultForX;
    this.Y = defaultForY;
    // repeat ...
 }
 public void Parse(Uri uri)
 {
    // parse values from query string.
    // if you need to distinguish from default vs. specified, add an appropriate property

 }

This has worked well on 100's of projects. You can use one of the many other parsing solutions to parse values.

Answer 4

You can use sort of Maybe monad (though I'd prefer Jay's answer)

public class Maybe<T>
{
    private readonly T _value;

    public Maybe(T value)
    {
        _value = value;
        IsNothing = false;
    }

    public Maybe()
    {
        IsNothing = true;
    }

    public bool IsNothing { get; private set; }

    public T Value
    {
        get
        {
            if (IsNothing)
            {
                throw new InvalidOperationException("Value doesn't exist");
            }
            return _value;
        }
    }

    public override bool Equals(object other)
    {
        if (IsNothing)
        {
            return (other == null);
        }
        if (other == null)
        {
            return false;
        }
        return _value.Equals(other);
    }

    public override int GetHashCode()
    {
        if (IsNothing)
        {
            return 0;
        }
        return _value.GetHashCode();
    }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        if (IsNothing)
        {
            return "";
        }
        return _value.ToString();
    }

    public static implicit operator Maybe<T>(T value)
    {
        return new Maybe<T>(value);
    }

    public static explicit operator T(Maybe<T> value)
    {
        return value.Value;
    }
}

Your method would look like:

    public static Maybe<T> GetQueryString<T>(string key) where T : IConvertible
    {
        if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString[key]) == false)
        {
            string value = HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString[key];

            try
            {
                return (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T));
            }
            catch
            {
                //Could not convert.  Pass back default value...
                return new Maybe<T>();
            }
        }

        return new Maybe<T>();
    }

Answer 5

What if you specified the default value to return, instead of using default(T)?

public static T GetQueryString<T>(string key, T defaultValue) {...}

It makes calling it easier too:

var intValue = GetQueryString("intParm", Int32.MinValue);
var strValue = GetQueryString("strParm", "");
var dtmValue = GetQueryString("dtmPatm", DateTime.Now); // eg use today's date if not specified

The downside being you need magic values to denote invalid/missing querystring values.