C# interchangeable properties

Question

I'm trying to create a substitute for kind of property, that accepts multiple types as inputs/outputs.

Here is some pseudo code of one ugly solution:

http://pastebin.com/gbh4SrZX

Basically i have piece of data and i need to be able assign multiple types to it, and react accordingly. I have pieces of data that i operate with, and i need efficient way to manage loading them from file names when needed, while maintaining the same code, if I'm manipulating with data, that's already loaded.

This would be awesome:

SomeDataClass data1 = new SomeDataClass();
SomeDataClass data2 = new SomeDataClass();

data1.Data = "somefile.dat";
data2.Data = data1.Data;

while SomeDataClass.Data is not type of string.

Answer 1

You can do much of that with an implicit conversion operator, i.e.

class SomeDataClass {
    public SomeData Data {get;set;}
}
class SomeData {
    static SomeData Load(string path) {
        return new SomeData(); // TODO
    }
    public static implicit operator SomeData(string path)
    {
        return Load(path);
    }
}
static class Program {
    static void Main()
    {
        SomeDataClass data1 = new SomeDataClass();
        SomeDataClass data2 = new SomeDataClass();

        data1.Data = "somefile.dat"; // this is a load
        data2.Data = data1.Data; // this is not a load
    }
}

However! Frankly, I would consider it more desirable to just make the operation explicit:

class SomeDataClass {
    public SomeData Data {get;set;}
}
class SomeData {
    public static SomeData Load(string path) {
        return new SomeData(); // TODO
    }
}
static class Program {
    static void Main()
    {
        SomeDataClass data1 = new SomeDataClass();
        SomeDataClass data2 = new SomeDataClass();

        data1.Data = SomeData.Load("somefile.dat");
        data2.Data = data1.Data;
    }
}