Override ToString()

[robertfah]

Don't know if this can even be done or if my thinking is way off but I'll try to explain what I would like to do.

I've got a class called "Issue"; it holds properties for a Help Desk Issue (IssueID, UserID, IssueTypeID, etc.). I have a need in the code-behind to store the "string" values of these properties at any time. I originally thought of a simple stored procedure that would go out and return the string value but I have close to 15+ properties of the "int" type that are ID's and that would make for a lot of SP calls and DB hits.

So I was wondering if there's a way to override the ToString() method of any of my int type properties so I can handle it once in there. Pseudo Code might look something like:

public int UserID {get; set;}
public int IssueTypeID {get; set;}

public override int ToString()
{
   //code here to override the int.
   return "test";
}

Then in code elsewhere it would be:

string IssueType = oIssue.IssueTypeID.ToString();

So the variable IssueType would have the string value of "test".

Make any sense? From a programming standpoint, does it make any sense to try to accomplish this? Can it be done?

Thanks for any info & help!

 

[ralphtrent]

The first thing I see that may cause an issue is your are saying in your method line to return an int value

public override [b]int[/b] ToString()

but then you are returning a string

return "test";

I think the complier will fail you here.

I am not sure I fully understand your need but why not just return each property as an int and then convert as a string in the calling code, OR just create string properties of each each (duplicating work yes) but then return the string representaton of the int

 class Issue
    {
        int gintNumber = 100;
        public int Number
        {
            get { return gintNumber; }
            set { gintNumber = value; }
        }

        public string sNumber
        {
            get { return gintNumber.ToString(); }
        }
    }

 

[ralphtrent]

another way to do it like this.

class Issue
    {
        string gstrPropertyIWant = string.Empty;
        public string PropertyIWant{set { gstrPropertyIWant = value; }}
        public int Number1{get { return 100; }}
        public int Number2{get { return 200; }}
        public int Number3{get { return 300; }}
        public int Number4{get { return 400; }}

        public override string ToString()
        {
            System.Reflection.PropertyInfo[] pis = (typeof(Issue)).GetProperties(BindingFlags.Public|BindingFlags.Instance);
            string lstrValue = string.Empty;
            foreach (PropertyInfo pi in pis)
            {
                if (pi.Name.Equals(gstrPropertyIWant))
                {
                    int objvalue = 0;
                    objvalue = Convert.ToInt32(pi.GetValue(this, null));
                    lstrValue += string.Format("{0} is {1}", pi.Name, objvalue.ToString());
                    lstrValue += Environment.NewLine;
                }
            }
            return string.Format(lstrValue);
        }
    }

You have one property that will let the user ask for a specific property and when you call ToString, you return just that one.

class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Issue i = new Issue();
            i.PropertyIWant = "Number2";
            Console.WriteLine(i.ToString());
            Console.ReadLine();

        }
    }
// Output is [b]Number2 is 200[/b]

Does that work?