Generic type conversion FROM string

Question

I am not sure whether I understood your intentions correctly, but let's see if this one helps.

public class TypedProperty<T> : Property where T : IConvertible
{
    public T TypedValue
    {
        get { return (T)Convert.ChangeType(base.Value, typeof(T)); }
        set { base.Value = value.ToString();}
    }
}

lubos hasko's method fails for nullables. The method below will work for nullables. I didn't come up with it, though. I found it via Google: http://web.archive.org/web/20101214042641/http://dogaoztuzun.com/post/C-Generic-Type-Conversion.aspx Credit to "Tuna Toksoz"

Usage first:

TConverter.ChangeType<T>(StringValue);  

The class is below.

public static class TConverter
{
    public static T ChangeType<T>(object value)
    {
        return (T)ChangeType(typeof(T), value);
    }

    public static object ChangeType(Type t, object value)
    {
        TypeConverter tc = TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(t);
        return tc.ConvertFrom(value);
    }

    public static void RegisterTypeConverter<T, TC>() where TC : TypeConverter
    {

        TypeDescriptor.AddAttributes(typeof(T), new TypeConverterAttribute(typeof(TC)));
    }
}

For many types (integer, double, DateTime etc), there is a static Parse method. You can invoke it using reflection:

MethodInfo m = typeof(T).GetMethod("Parse", new Type[] { typeof(string) } );

if (m != null)
{
    return m.Invoke(null, new object[] { base.Value });
}

TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(PropertyObject).ConvertFrom(Value)

TypeDescriptor is class having method GetConvertor which accept a Type object and then you can call ConvertFrom method to convert the value for that specified object.

With inspiration from the Bob's answer, these extensions also support null value conversion and all primitive conversion back and fourth.

public static class ConversionExtensions
{
        public static object Convert(this object value, Type t)
        {
            Type underlyingType = Nullable.GetUnderlyingType(t);

            if (underlyingType != null && value == null)
            {
                return null;
            }
            Type basetype = underlyingType == null ? t : underlyingType;
            return System.Convert.ChangeType(value, basetype);
        }

        public static T Convert<T>(this object value)
        {
            return (T)value.Convert(typeof(T));
        }
}

Examples

            string stringValue = null;
            int? intResult = stringValue.Convert<int?>();

            int? intValue = null;
            var strResult = intValue.Convert<string>();