Your code sample won’t work, because the generic method expects a type identifier, not a an instance of the Type class. You’ll have to use reflection to do it:
public class Example {
public void CallingTest()
{
MethodInfo method = typeof (Example).GetMethod("Test");
MethodInfo genericMethod = method.MakeGenericMethod(typeof (string));
genericMethod.Invoke(this, null);
}
public void Test<T>()
{
Console.WriteLine(typeof (T).Name);
}
}
Do keep in mind that this is very brittle, I’d rather suggest finding another pattern to call your method.
Another hacky solution (maybe someone can make it a bit cleaner) would be to use some expression magic:
public class Example {
public void CallingTest()
{
MethodInfo method = GetMethod<Example>(x => x.Test<object>());
MethodInfo genericMethod = method.MakeGenericMethod(typeof (string));
genericMethod.Invoke(this, null);
}
public static MethodInfo GetMethod<T>(Expression<Action<T>> expr)
{
return ((MethodCallExpression) expr.Body)
.Method
.GetGenericMethodDefinition();
}
public void Test<T>()
{
Console.WriteLine(typeof (T).Name);
}
}
Note passing the ‘object’ type identifier as a generic type argument in the lambda. Couldn’t figure out so quickly how to get around that. Either way, this is compile-time safe I think. It just feels wrong somehow :/