Duck type testing with C# 4 for dynamic objects

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If you have control over all of the object types that you will be using dynamically, another option would be to force them to inherit from a subclass of the DynamicObject class that is tailored to not fail when a method that does not exist is invoked:

A quick and dirty version would look like this:

public class DynamicAnimal : DynamicObject
{
    public override bool TryInvokeMember(InvokeMemberBinder binder, object[] args, out object result)
    {
        bool success = base.TryInvokeMember(binder, args, out result);

        // If the method didn't exist, ensure the result is null
        if (!success) result = null;

        // Always return true to avoid Exceptions being raised
        return true;
    }
}

You could then do the following:

public class Duck : DynamicAnimal
{
    public string Quack()
    {
        return "QUACK!";
    }
}

public class Cow : DynamicAnimal
{
    public string Moo()
    {
        return "Mooooo!";
    }
}
class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var duck = new Duck();
        var cow = new Cow();

        Console.WriteLine("Can a duck quack?");
        Console.WriteLine(DoQuack(duck));
        Console.WriteLine("Can a cow quack?");
        Console.WriteLine(DoQuack(cow));
        Console.ReadKey();
    }

    public static string DoQuack(dynamic animal)
    {
        string result = animal.Quack();
        return result ?? "... silence ...";
    }
}

And your output would be:

Can a duck quack?
QUACK!
Can a cow quack?
... silence ...

Edit: I should note that this is the tip of the iceberg if you are able to use this approach and build on DynamicObject. You could write methods like bool HasMember(string memberName) if you so desired.

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