A generic classs is a class that takes one or more type parameters, which it then uses in the definition of the class. It can be thought of as a template for a class.
public class ThingContainer<TParam>
{
private TParam theThing; public void SetThing(TParam newValue)
{
theThing = newValue;
}
}
You use a generic class by specifying a type for each of the type parameters.
ThingContainer<int> intContainer = new ThingContainer<int>();
intContainer.SetThing(); ThingContainer<Dog> dogContainer = new ThingContainer<Dog>();
dogContainer.SetThing(new Dog("Kirby", ));
In this example, we use a generic class to store an object of an arbitary type. We use one version of the class to store an int and another to store a Dog. Notice that wherever we use the name of the generic class to define an instance, we need to supply a typename (e.g. int, Dog) as a parameter.