What does "The type T must be a reference type in order to use it as parameter" mean?
C#GenericsControllerC# Problem Overview
I'm trying to create a generic controller on my C#/MVC/Entity Framework application.
public class GenericRecordController<T> : Controller
{
private DbSet<T> Table;
// ...
public action()
{
// ...
db.Entry(T_Instance).State = System.Data.Entity.EntityState.Modified;
}
}
However the DbSet<T>
and T_Instance
line has a compiler error.
> The type T
must be a reference type in order to use it as parameter.
When I constrain it as a class
, it was solved.
Controller where T : class
What does the error mean? I'm not asking for a solution, I would like to understand why this error occurs and why constraining it as a class
solves it.
C# Solutions
Solution 1 - C#
If you look at the definition of DbSet<TEntity>
:
public class DbSet<TEntity> : DbQuery<TEntity>, IDbSet<TEntity>, IQueryable<TEntity>, IEnumerable<TEntity>, IQueryable, IEnumerable, IInternalSetAdapter
where TEntity : class
Because it has a type constraint
that the generic type must be a class
then you must initialize it with a type that also matches this condition:
public class GenericRecordController<T> : Controller where T : class
{ ... }
Solution 2 - C#
They apparently have a constraint on the generic type.
All you need to change is:
public class GenericRecordController<T> : Controller where T : class
This tells the compiler that only reference types may be supplied as a type for T.
Solution 3 - C#
You can do it on just a method as well:
public bool HasKey<T>(T obj) where T : class
{
return _db.Entry<T>(obj).IsKeySet;
}