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c#operator-keywordimplicit
Roger Dai
Roger Dai

Reputation: 73

Explicit conversion operator error when converting Dictionary<string,string>

User-defined conversion must convert to or from the enclosing type.

The problem arises when trying to convert the Dictionary<string,string>. Is this even possible?

Below is my code.

    using Newtonsoft.Json;

    public static implicit operator Dictionary<string, string>(string jsonString)
    {
        return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Dictionary<string, string>>(jsonString); ;
    }

    public static implicit operator string(Dictionary<string, string> dict)
    {
        return JsonConvert.SerializeObject(dict);
    }

Does it mean that I should write the two methods in Dictionary Class? If so, is it impossible to convert string to Dictionary? thanks for your help.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 682

Answers (1)

Botz3000
Botz3000

Reputation: 39620

You can't define additional conversion operators for Dictionary<string, string> or string if they don't convert from or to the type you are defining the operators in, the same way you can't declare additional methods for those types.

You either need to define those conversions as normal static utility methods, or you could define a class derived from Dictionary<string, string> and define the operators there: 

public class StringDictionary : Dictionary<string, string>
{
    public static implicit operator StringDictionary(string jsonString) 
    {
        return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<StringDictionary>(jsonString);;
    }

    public static implicit operator string(StringDictionary dict) 
    {
        return JsonConvert.SerializeObject(dict);
    }
}

Upvotes: 3

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