Return object as interface from generic method

Question

I have one interface InterfaceBase and some interfaces derived from it Interface1, Interface2. Next I have classes that are implementing the InterfaceX interfaces, not the base one.

Now, i am beginner in generics and so many new approaches in this made great mess in my head :( . I want to create factory (static class) where I call something like

Interface1 concrete1 = Factory.Get<Interface1>();

Here is my (sample) implementation of factory, that does not work:

  public static class Factory {

    public static T Get<T>() where T: InterfaceBase{

      Type type = typeof(T);

      //return new Concrete1() as T; // type T cannot be used with the as
      //return new Concrete1() as type; //type not found
      //return new Concrete1(); // cannot implicitly convert
      //return new Concrete1() as InterfaceBase; //cannot convert IBase to T
      //return new Concrete1() as Interface1; //cannot convert Interface1 to T
    }
  }

What I want to achieve is hide the classes (they are webservice handlers) from the rest of the application to exchange them lightly. I wanted use the factory as the classes will be singletons and they will be stored in Dictionary inside the factory, so the factory can spread them across the application through this method, but as interfaces.. Maybe i am not using the constraints correctly am I doing smthing wrong? is my approach bad? can be there something better, maybe the whole architecture shoul be reworked? diagram to show better the architecture. The factory is not in it

Answer 1

Methinks what you are looking for is a "Poor-Man Dependency Injection". I guess you should use a real IoC container for that, there are a lot of options (Unity, Castle Windsor, Ninject...).

But anyway, If you insist in doing it by yourself, go with what @Sergey Kudriavtsev is recomending. Just make sure that, for each interface, you return the proper concrete class. Something like this:

public interface InterfaceBase { }
public interface Interface1 : InterfaceBase { }
public interface InterfaceX : InterfaceBase { }

public class Concrete1 : Interface1 { }
public class ConcreteX : InterfaceX { }

public static class Factory
{
    public static T Get<T>()
        where T : InterfaceBase
    {
        if (typeof(Interface1).IsAssignableFrom(typeof(T)))
        {
            return (T)(InterfaceBase)new Concrete1();
        }
        // ...
        else if (typeof(InterfaceX).IsAssignableFrom(typeof(T)))
        {
            return (T)(InterfaceBase)new ConcreteX();
        }

        throw new ArgumentException("Invalid type " + typeof(T).Name, "T"); // Avoids "not all code paths return a value".
    }
}

And you call it by passing the interface reference to the factory:

var instance = factory.Get<Interface1>();

Answer 2

This should work:

return (T)(new Concrete1());

Also the code for calling factory method should be like this:

Interface1 concrete1 = Factory.Get<Interface1>();