cast child object as parent

Question

I need to be able to cast an instance of a child object to an instance of its parent object.

public class Parent  {     public string name{ get; set; }  }  public class Child : Parent { }  var myClass = new Child();  (Parent)myClass; 

The cast above doesn't seem to work, and the object still has child's type when serialized.

Is there another way to cast it?

I'm only using the child class for validation– I need the child to have only the parent's type for serialization reasons.

Answer 1

You're not assigning the cast to anything.

var myClass = new Child(); Parent p = (Parent)myClass; 

Edit - I think you misunderstand how casting works. Say Parent has a virtual method, DoStuff() that is overridden in Child. Even if you cast myClass to Parent, it's going to run the Child's DoStuff method. No matter what, that Child is a Child, and will always be a Child, even if you cast it.

If you're trying to pass it to a method that accepts a Parent object, you don't have to cast it. It's already a Parent, by virtue of being a Child.

I think we're missing something. What are you trying to accoplish? What's not working?