C# pass anonymous parameter?

Question

Sorry for title, I cant find the correct one. I have more than one method that returns the same result.

returning type

public class JsonTreeView
{
    public int id { get; set; }
    public string text { get; set; }
    public string state { get; set; }
    public string @checked { get; set; }
    public string attributes { get; set; }
    public List<JsonTreeView> children { get; set; }
}

first method

List<JsonTreeView> FromReportTree(List<ReportTree> list)
{
}

second method

List<JsonTreeView> FromLocationTree(List<LocationTree> list)
{
}

and anothers... properties of Tree models are different. for example :

LocationTree (id, name, parent, text)
ReportTree (sno, name, parent, desc)

Is it possible to write one method for all these tree models? Any suggestion or starting point?

Thanks...

Answer 1

I suggest that you make a private method that does the grunt work, and keep the overloaded methods for the different types. Call the private method from the other methods, with a function that creates a JsonTreeView object from the specific objects of that method:

private List<JsonTreeView> FromReportTree<T>(List<T> list, Func<T, JsonTreeView> convert) {
  // loop through the list and call convert to create items
  List<JsonTreeView> result = new List<JsonTreeView>();
  foreach (T item in list) {
    result.Add(convert(item));
  }
  return result;
}

List<JsonTreeView> FromReportTree(List<ReportTree> list) {
  return FromReportTree(list, t => new JsonTreeView(t.id, t.text, ... ));
}

List<JsonTreeView> FromReportTree(List<LocationTree> list) {
  return FromReportTree(list, t => new JsonTreeView(t.sno, t.desc, ... ));
}

Answer 2

It depends on what happens in those methods. You say that the various Tree models have different properties; does the logic in the method need any of the non-common properties? If the logic in each of those methods is the same, you can do this:

List<JsonTreeView> FromReportTree<T>(List<T> list) where T : BaseTree
{
    //some logic
}

assuming you have a BaseTree model of some kind, otherwise T : class or just leave that off (not recommended).

If the logic differs, you can still do it like that by doing a check if (list is LocationTree) and using that to do the logic specific to LocationTree, but that can get messy.