Dynamic method binding

One of the added features to C# 4.0 was dynamic objects. It gives late binding to C# so everything doesn't have to checked at compile time. In some cases this makes it a lot easier to use reflection as you don't have to use any of the .net API's to do so. You can act directly on the object as if you had the type at hand. All you need to know is the footprint of what you need to access. Most examples emphasize how this can be used when integrating with other technologies like old com objects etc, but I have been looking for usages outside that scope. One is ofcourse reflection, another one is dynamic method binding that I will try and explain.


Basic OO with cats and dogs.

I create the traditionel object structure to support me explain what I mean. Animal is a pure abstract concept, Cat is an Animal and so is Dog.

Make the animals make som noise

I have created a MakeSound method that operates on the interface and one for each of the classes. As there is no general sound that will match any animal I just print ????? to the screen when in the context of Animal.
What I want is to have a list of animals containing cats and dogs and then call the MakeSound for each animal in the list.

As in C# < 4.0

The big question is what method is actually called. The answer is that the method binding is done at compile time, the best match is the method that takes the interface as a parameter. All the objects are treated as of type Animal. This is the way it has always worked in C# and it should therefore be no surprise if you have been in a similar situation. The output is as follows.


Result of program with static method binding



Use of var keyword



With C# 3.5 the var keyword was introduced. One might think that this changed the way this would work as the programmer no longer defines the type and the framework should therefore be able to select a better method implementation automatically. The answer is that the var is just a way to have the compiler derive the type instead of the programmer. This is all done at compile time and the best match will therefore still be the method that operates on the interface.

Handle the objects as dynamic instead

The dynamic keyword was introduced with C# 4.0 and this changes the possibilities when writing code like this. When treating every object in the list as a dynamic object, the compiler won't bind to any method but will leave it to the runtime to make the connection. This means that the type of every object is considered and handled on its own and the items in the list won't nescesarily result in the same method being called. This can be very usefull when iterating tree structures etc. The downside is that you will have no intellisense and no compile time validation when writing the code.

As the best methods are now called, the output will be cat and dog specific.

Output when treating the objects as dynamic

This can definately clean up some of my code. I might write a comment along with the code so that people in the future can figure out my intentions.

Related posts:
Wrapping objects with interfaces
Dynamic duck typing in .Net 3.5