concurrentQueue tryDequeue with unknown out result

Question

I'm trying to build a flexible method to handle different kind of ConcurrentQueues, 'cause most logic to handle the queue's is the same.

It looks a bit like this:

private void StartDoWorkButton(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        StartDoWork();
    }

    private ConcurrentQueue<TestData> myQueue = new ConcurrentQueue<TestData>();
    private void StartDoWork()
    {
        DoWork(myQueue, new TestData());
    }

    private void DoWork(dynamic queue,object objectType)
    {
        dynamic outResult = Activator.CreateInstance(objectType.GetType());
        while(queue.TryDequeue(out outResult))
        {
            //do something
        }
    }

The outResult seems to be of the correct type, but I get this message:"The best overloaded method match for 'System.Collections.Concurrent.ConcurrentQueue.TryDequeue(out WinformWith10pxNewProject1.TestData)' has some invalid arguments"

Thing is, it works fine when I do this:

    private void DoWork(dynamic queue,object objectType)
    {
        TestData outResult;// hardcoded type
        while(queue.TryDequeue(out outResult))
        {
            //do something
        }
    }

Is there any way I can work around the hard coding of the type? Would give me a lot of flexibility for the methods I'm creating.

Kind regards,

Matthijs

Answer 1

I would use a generic method for this:

private void DoWork<T>(ConcurrentQueue<T> queue,object objectType)
{
    T outResult;// generic type
    while(queue.TryDequeue(out outResult))
    {
        //do something
    }
}

This way you can use any type of the ConcurrentQueue< T>.

And you can call it like: (same as the hardcoded veriant)

private void StartDoWork()
{
    DoWork(myQueue, new TestData());
}

If you need the < T> to be of a specific basetype or interface, you can create constrains on it:

private void DoWork<T>(ConcurrentQueue<T> queue,object objectType) where T: IDisposable
{
    T outResult;// generic type

    while(queue.TryDequeue(out outResult))
    {
        //do something

        outResult.Dispose();
    }
}

The IDisposable is for example. So you're able to call the Dispose method (from the IDisposable)