IQueryable OfType<T> where T is a runtime Type

Question

I need to be able to get something similar to the following to work:

Type type = ??? // something decided at runtime with .GetType or typeof;
object[] entityList = context.Resources.OfType<type>().ToList();

Is this possible? I am able to use .NET 4 if anything new in that allows this.

Answer 1

 object[] entityList = context.Resources
                              .Where(t=> t.GetType() == type)
                              .ToArray();

Answer 2

You can call it by reflection:

MethodInfo method = typeof(Queryable).GetMethod("OfType");
MethodInfo generic = method.MakeGenericMethod(new Type[]{ type });
// Use .NET 4 covariance
var result = (IEnumerable<object>) generic.Invoke
      (null, new object[] { context.Resources });
object[] array = result.ToArray();

An alternative would be to write your own OfTypeAndToArray generic method to do both bits of it, but the above should work.

Answer 3

Looks like you’ll need to use Reflection here...

public static IEnumerable<object> DyamicOfType<T>(
        this IQueryable<T> input, Type type)
{
    var ofType = typeof(Queryable).GetMethod("OfType",
                     BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.Public);
    var ofTypeT = ofType.MakeGenericMethod(type);
    return (IEnumerable<object>) ofTypeT.Invoke(null, new object[] { input });
}

Type type = // ...;
var entityList = context.Resources.DynamicOfType(type).ToList();

Answer 4

Purely on your question to use "Generics", No it is not possible.

Generics is a compile time feature, and not a runtime discovery. For runtime, you need to use Reflection or Dynamic.