Create a class that can be created as an XNamespace class

Question

An XNamespace object can be created as follows:

XNamespace ns="http://www.xyz.com"; 

Here the line " http://www.xyz.com " is interpreted as the value of the property (NamespaceName) of this class. I was wondering if I can create such a custom class where it can simply be created in this way. The syntax really looks pretty cool.

Answer 1

You just need to add the implicit conversion operator from the string:

 public class Foo { private readonly string value; public Foo(string value) { this.value = value; } public static implicit operator Foo(string value) { return new Foo(value); } } 

I would use this with caution, although this makes it less obvious what happens when reading the code.

(LINQ to XML makes all kinds of things “a bit dubious” in terms of API design ... but manages to get away from it because it all fits together so neatly.)

Answer 2

 class MyClass { public string Value {get; private set;} public MyClass(string s) { this.Value = s; } public static implicit operator MyClass(string s) { return new MyClass(s); } } 

Now you can:

 MyClass myClass = "my string"; Console.WriteLine(myClass.Value); //prints "my string" 

Note that XNamespace also supports the add statement , which takes strings as the correct parameter. This is a good API solution if you are dealing with strings. To implement this, you can also overload the addition operator:

 //XNamespace returns XName (an instance of another type) //but you can change it as you would like public static MyClass operator +(MyClass val, string name) { return new MyClass(val.Value + name); }