Generic Variables/Classes

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Originally Posted by pro4never Your issue is because you're not telling it what type of data it will be storing. Collections need to be told when declared what type of objects they will be storing. As such your collection can only hold one type of MyClass properly (EG: MyClass<uint>) That being said you could have it store any type of base class in order to store multiple types but it all really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If you could be a bit more clear we can probably provide some more help. Example of base class holding different object types. public class MyClass<T> { T value; } Dictionary<uint, MyClass<ILocatableObject>> objectCollection; You could then use anything inheriting from ILocatable object and access it via MyClass.value although you'd need to type check and cast it based on your needs if you require details past the initial ILoc interface. Anyways, let us know what it is you're trying to do and we can be a touch more specific.

ushort _short = 2345;
object _obj = _short;
if(_obj is uint) = true

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Originally Posted by InfamousNoone the biggest weakness about generics in C# is that they're strong (typed; pun intended). you'll find out most of what u want to know about how to use them, purposes, etc. here: [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] the only thing that they don't mention is as i mentioned above, they're strong-typed, but it turns out this is enforced by the C# compiler, and is not true at the IL level, for instance, sizeof(T) is not valid in C#, however, hacking the IL we can create our own sizeof() function that works on generic types, for more.. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

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Originally Posted by StarBucks Basically I'm trying to use this with my database system of sorts. My Idea is not to update the database until they log off but I don't want to save everything if it wasn't changed. Greg

Quote:

Originally Posted by StarBucks Pro, I understand that I need to tell it what type I want to store but the thing is, I want to be able to store multiple types in a dictionary.

    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Explicit)]
    public struct MyUnion
    {
        [FieldOffset(0)]
        public int Int;
        [FieldOffset(0)]
        public bool Bool;
        [FieldOffset(0)]
        public DateTime Time;

        // note you must be aware of the sizes of your pure structures above
        // to get this offset right, max(sizeof(Int), ..., sizeof(DateTime)) = 8
        [FieldOffset(8)]
        public object Obj;
        [FieldOffset(8)]
        public string Str;
        [FieldOffset(8)]
        public string[] Strings;
    }

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Originally Posted by pro4never I feel NHibernate or a similar system will be far more efficient as well as user friendly. Even if you have everything working properly in this custom system of yours you'd still be executing multiple queries, lots of checking going on, etc. Personally I use the NHibernate Domain objects as the private members of my classes with public assessors to update them. When the user logs out? Just AddOrUpdate the entity's database entry with no extra type checking and all done in one quick easily managed query. eg DbCharacter characterInfo public byteLevel{get {return characterInfo.Level; } set { characterInfo.Level = value; Send(new UpdatePacket(UID, UpdateType.Level, value);}} All of the mapping already has the object types stored which match up properly with the table itself and then you only save when you kick or logout the user. Bit off topic but for that I use a static UserManager which tracks all connected clients. From there you can easily handle login/logout actions, querying players by id/name/etc as well as things like saving all players for shutdown.

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Originally Posted by StarBucks I have looked into NHibernate and from my understanding it will not apply to my application. I'm trying to keep my "database" flat file for portability because I develop on multiple computers on a given day. I'm trying to avoid having to install anything unless of course It is also portable. SQLite might have some portability but i haven't looked into that yet. As I expected, just saving all variables when the player logs off is way faster than queueing the changed ones with my current system. I'm going to try a few different things to see if I can get something thats comparable.

Quote:

Originally Posted by InfamousNoone Use a union. Code: [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Explicit)] public struct MyUnion { [FieldOffset(0)] public int Int; [FieldOffset(0)] public bool Bool; [FieldOffset(0)] public DateTime Time; // note you must be aware of the sizes of your pure structures above // to get this offset right, max(sizeof(Int), ..., sizeof(DateTime)) = 8 [FieldOffset(8)] public object Obj; [FieldOffset(8)] public string Str; [FieldOffset(8)] public string[] Strings; } your pure structures (structures that only consist of other structures, i.e. a Tuple<string, int> isn't a pure structure) must be grouped at one offset, and your objects must grouped at another.

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Originally Posted by pro4never Flat file and efficiency never really go in hand but assuming you're doing a flatfile for that specific character then you could always just do a tostring overload to return the flatfile contents for that character instance and then write it to a file. It's not what you're looking for but it would be pretty damn simple and easy to understand.