Just wondering whether I am missing something.
In the book "Professional .NET 2.0 Generics" by
Tod Golding , the author asserts for the example below :

"In this example, the goal is to create a general GetItems() method that could retrieve a collection of
objects from a database. This method might return Person, Customer, Employee, or Order objects.
And, with generics, you expect the list returned to be a type-safe collection. The following generic
method achieves these goals:"

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Collections.ObjectModel
using System.Data.OleDb;
public class GetDatabaseItems {
OleDbConnection dbConn = new OleDbConnection("");
public Collection<T> GetItems<T>(String sql) {
OleDbCommand selectCmd = new OleDbCommand(sql, dbConn);
Collection<T> retVal = new Collection<T>();
OleDbDataReader dataReader = selectCmd.ExecuteReader();
while (dataReader.Read() == true)
retVal.Add((T)dataReader[0]);
return retVal;
}
}

As far as I can see it just picks up a value of the single column ( which may be primitive type in Java parlance ) and tries to cast to a class, which doesn't seem to be sensible.

Hi there,

I don't have the book right here so I can't check, but is it possible that this example is using the new SQL Server 2005 features where actual .NET types are stored in the database? That way, dataReader[0] could truly be a T, like a Customer and the cast would succeed.

From which chapter and page is this example?

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.
Author of ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results and Beginning Dreamweaver MX / MX 2004
Want to be my colleague? Then check out this post.

You might be right , I was not aware of such a feature. Anyway, it is not stressed in a book. As for the place in a book : Chapter 5 "Generic Methods" / page 98
I guess, even for standard types we can pass as parameters a number of columns and types ( to speed it up ) and iterate and populate ArrayList and then somehow instantiate generic class ( Person, Customer ... ) ( e.g. there is a constructor with ArrayList ) and then add to Collection. But how to keep it generic :) don't know.

I guess if you start passing around collections of columns / properties, things are no longer generic.

You could use reflection to retrieve all the properties of T and then use each property name to access the correct column in the data reader. But, since reflection is slow, you loose some of the benefits that Generics were supposed to bring....

Cheers,

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.
Author of ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results and Beginning Dreamweaver MX / MX 2004
Want to be my colleague? Then check out this post.

Ignoring speed issues , I have no problem to understand how reflection may be used if T className is given as another parameter.

public Collection<T> GetItems<T>(String sql , String className)

Type theType = Type.GetType(className);

...

Could you give a hint how syntactically use T itself for reflection purposes.

Type theType = Type.GetType( T );

gives a compile error.

I think this should work:

Type myType = typeof(T);

Cheers,

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.
Author of ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results and Beginning Dreamweaver MX / MX 2004
Want to be my colleague? Then check out this post.

Yes it does. Thanks.
Also inside method instead of
T t = new T()

should be used
T t = default(T)

But reflections still unavoidable since methods are not known to the compiler

t.Fill(arrayList)
doesn't compile

Yes, I agree.

You could use reflection to get each property of the object and then get its value from the reader, with (pseudo) code like this:

foreach (propertyName in T.Properties)
{
  T.PropertyName = myReader[propertyName];
}

Look at stuff like GetProperty and GetProperies on the Type class.

Cheers,

Imar
---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.
Author of ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results and Beginning Dreamweaver MX / MX 2004
Want to be my colleague? Then check out this post.