I was playing around with weak references recently and wanted to tidy up my code a little – there were casts everywhere – so I knocked up a derivation using generics. I'm sure someone somewhere already did this, but I thought I'd share it anyway, so here it is.
/// <summary>
/// Strongly-typed weak reference.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="T">The type of object being referenced.</typeparam>
public class WeakReference<T> : WeakReference, ISerializable where T : class
{
/// <summary>
/// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="WeakReference<T>"/> class, referencing
/// the specified object.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="target">An object to track.</param>
public WeakReference(T target)
: base(target)
{
}
/// <summary>
/// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="WeakReference<T>"/> class, referencing
/// the specified object and using the specified resurrection tracking.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="target">An object to track.</param>
/// <param name="trackResurrection">Indicates when to stop tracking the object. If <c>true</c>, the object is tracked
/// after finalization; if <c>false</c>, the object is only tracked until finalization..</param>
public WeakReference(T target, bool trackResurrection)
: base(target, trackResurrection)
{
}
/// <summary>
/// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="WeakReference<T>"/> class.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="info">An object that holds all the data needed to serialize or deserialize the current <see cref="T:System.WeakReference"/> object.</param>
/// <param name="context">(Reserved) Describes the source and destination of the serialized stream specified by <paramref name="info"/>.</param>
/// <exception cref="T:System.ArgumentNullException">
/// <paramref name="info"/> is null. </exception>
protected WeakReference(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
: base(info, context)
{
}
/// <summary>
/// Gets or sets the object (the target) referenced by the current <see cref="T:System.WeakReference"/> object.
/// </summary>
/// <value></value>
/// <returns>null if the object referenced by the current <see cref="T:System.WeakReference"/> object has been garbage collected; otherwise, a reference to the object referenced by the current <see cref="T:System.WeakReference"/> object.</returns>
/// <exception cref="T:System.InvalidOperationException">The reference to the target object is invalid. This exception can be thrown while setting this property if the value is a null reference or if the object has been finalized during the set operation.</exception>
public new T Target
{
get
{
return (T)base.Target;
}
set
{
base.Target = value;
}
}
}
There's not much to say about this class. I've replaced the Target property of the original WeakReference class with a strongly-typed one based on the type parameter, T. The other bits are just constructors to mirror those in the base class and it's job done.




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