How to check if object is an array of a certain type?

Question

This works fine:

var expectedType = typeof(string);
object value = "...";
if (value.GetType().IsAssignableFrom(expectedType))
{
     ...
}

But how do I check if value is a string array without setting expectedType to typeof(string[])? I want to do something like:

var expectedType = typeof(string);
object value = new[] {"...", "---"};
if (value.GetType().IsArrayOf(expectedType)) // <---
{
     ...
}

Is this possible?

Answer 1

Use Type.IsArray and Type.GetElementType() to check the element type of an array.

Type valueType = value.GetType();
if (valueType.IsArray && expectedType.IsAssignableFrom(valueType.GetElementType())
{
 ...
}

But beware of Type.IsAssignableFrom()! If you want to check for an exact match, you should check for equality (i.e. typeA == typeB). If you want to check if a given type is the type itself or a subclass/interface, then you should use Type.IsAssignableFrom():

typeof(BaseClass).IsAssignableFrom(typeof(ExpectedSubclass))