Array of Classes/Types

Question

Hi Say if I define a number of classes: myClass1 myClass2 myClass3 and so on. Is it possible to put these classes (not the instance/object of the class) into a dictionary or array or something so that I can define an object of specific type later on? Just to clarify I'm looking for something like: arrayOfClasses[3] = [myClass1myClass2myClass3]; //chunks of code here arrayOfClasses[i] myObject = new arrayOfClasses[i](); This is to save trouble of doing something like this: switch (i) { case 1: myClass1 myObject = new myClass1(); break; case 2: myClass2 myObject = new myClass2(); break; case 3: myClass3 myObject = new myClass3(); break; } which is going to be a pain if there are hundreds of different classes to choose from. Thanks!

Alan · Answer

Whilst you can't do that you can do this: string[] arrayOfClassNames = new string[3]{myClass1 myClass2 myClass3}; // create an object of type myClass2 say which corresponds to an index of 1 object temp = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(arrayOfClassNames[1])); myClass2 mc2 = (myClass2)temp; If you need to assign a reference to the object to a variable of type myClass2 which would usually be the case then there's no way to avoid hardcoding the cast AFAIK.