Method with Multiple Return Types

Question

I've looked through many questions that are similar to this, but none of them really touched on what I precisely want to do. What I am trying to do is read from an external source a list of variables that also include their data type into a string array:

Example:

ID/Key      Type    Value/Data; 
varName1    bool    true;
varName2    string  str;
varName3    int     5;

I then store these are objects into a dictionary as objects containing several strings, with the ID also serving as the key.

What I want to do is now create a method that uses a switch statement that casts the string into the correct datatype, and returns it without having to specify anything in the method call. The function should look something like this:

public ??? Method(string key)
{
    if(dictionary.ContainsKey(ID))
    {
        Var temp = dictionary[ID];

        switch (temp.Type)
        {
            case "bool":
                return Convert.ToBoolean(temp.Value);

            case "int"
                return Convert.ToInt(temp.Value);

            case "string"
                return temp.Value;
        }
    }

    return "NULL"; 
}

The method call should look something like this:

int x = Method(string key);
string word = Method(string key);
bool isTrue = Method(string key);

Maybe I've missed something, but I have yet to find something that really does something quite like this. Any and all thoughts about this are welcome as well.

Answer 1

In C# 7 you have the option to return multiple values from a method like this:

public (string SomeString, int SomeInt) DoSomething() { ... }

You can get the values like this:

var result = DoSomething();
Console.WriteLine(result.SomeString);
Console.WriteLine(result.SomeInt.ToString());

Or

(var someString, var someInt) = DoSomething();
Console.WriteLine(someString);
Console.WriteLine(someInt.ToString());

This works below the surface with a Tuple and you are not restricted to only 2 values. I don't know how many you can return but I suggest when you need to return that many values, create a class. More info: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/08/24/whats-new-in-csharp-7-0/