Professional .NET 2.0 Generics

7.1. Overview

To understand the role of generic constraints, you must first have a clear picture of why they're needed and how they are applied. With that as goal in mind, let's get started by building a sample that simply extends an existing generic type. For this scenario, let's assume you've decided to introduce your own DataObjectCollection that will descend from the List<T> collection and add a series of operations that provide specific functionality associated with some data objects from your domain. This new class is implemented as follows:

[VB code]
Public Class DataObjectCollection(Of T)
    Inherits List(Of T)

    Public Sub Print()
        Dim coll As List(Of T).Enumerator = GetEnumerator()
        While (coll.MoveNext())
            Console.Out.WriteLine(coll.Current.ToString)
        End While
    End Sub

    Public Function Lookup(ByVal lookupValue As String) As T

Dim retVal As T
        Dim coll As List(Of T).Enumerator = GetEnumerator()
        While (coll.MoveNext())
            If (coll.Current.ToString().Equals(lookupValue) = True) Then
                retVal = coll.Current
                Exit While
            End If
        End While
        Return retVal
    End Function
End Class

[C# code] public class DataObjectCollection<T> : List<T> { public void Print() { List<T>.Enumerator coll = GetEnumerator(); while (coll.MoveNext()) { Console.Out.WriteLine(coll.Current.ToString()); } } public T Lookup(string lookupValue) { T retVal = default(T); List<T>.Enumerator coll = GetEnumerator(); while (coll.MoveNext()) { if (coll.Current.ToString().Equals(lookupValue) == true) { retVal = coll.Current; break; } ...