c# - How to cast object to type described by Type class?

Question

I have a object:

ExampleClass ex = new ExampleClass();

And:

Type TargetType

I would like to cast ex to type described by TargetType like this:

Object o = (TargetType) ex;

But when I do this I get:

The type or namespace name 't' could not be found

So how to do this? Am I missing something obious here?

Update:

I would like to obtain something like this:

public CustomClass MyClassOuter
{
   get
   {
        return (CustomClass) otherClass;
   }
}

private otherClass;

And because I will have many properties like this I would like do this:

public CustomClass MyClassOuter
{
   get
   {
        return (GetThisPropertyType()) otherClass;
   }
}

private SomeOtherTypeClass otherClass;

Context:

Normally in my context in my class I need to create many properties. And in every one replace casting to the type of property. It does not seem to have sense to me (in my context) because I know what return type is and I would like to write some kind of code that will do the casting for me. Maybe it's case of generics, I don't know yet.

It's like I can assure in this property that I get the right object and in right type and am 100% able to cast it to the property type.

All I need to do this so that I do not need to specify in every one property that it has to "cast value to CustomClass", I would like to do something like "cast value to the same class as this property is".

For example:

class MYBaseClass
{
   protected List<Object> MyInternalObjects;
}

class MyClass
{
   public SpecialClass MyVeryOwnSpecialObject
   {
      get
      {
           return (SpecialClass) MyInteralObjects["MyVeryOwnSpecialObject"];
      }
   }
}

And ok - I can make many properties like this one above - but there is 2 problems:

1) I need to specify name of object on MyInternalObjects but it's the same like property name. This I solved with System.Reflection.MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().Name.

2) In every property I need to cast object from MyInternalObjects to different types. In MyVeryOwnSpecialObject for example - to SpecialClass. It's always the same class as the property.

That's why I would like to do something like this:

class MYBaseClass
{
   protected List<Object> MyInternalObjects;
}

class MyClass
{
   public SpecialClass MyVeryOwnSpecialObject
   {
      get
      {
           return (GetPropertyType()) MyInteralObjects[System.Reflection.MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().Name];
      }
   }
}

And now concerns: Ok, what for? Because further in my application I will have all benefits of safe types and so on (intellisense).

Second one: but now you will lost type safety in this place? No. Because I'm very sure that I have object of my type on a list.

Answer 1

Object o = (TargetType) ex;

This code is useless. You might have a type on the right but it's still only an object on the left side. You can't use functionality specific to TargetType like this.

---

This is how you can invoke a method of an unknown object of a given type:

object myObject = new UnknownType();
Type t = typeof(UnknownType); // myObject.GetType() would also work
MethodInfo sayHelloMethod = t.GetMethod("SayHello");
sayHelloMethod.Invoke(myObject, null);

With this UnknownType class:

class UnknownType
{
    public void SayHello()
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Hello world.");
    }
}