Building Custom Int Struct (DateTime Struct to)

[mbde]

I would like to build a custom Int struct that inheriets from Int, so that I can pass everything through but override the toString method.

What I have done in the pass...

I use customer business objects to store several ints and datetimes,

When loading these objects if the database returns null I would set the int = int.MinValue

On the GUI side when assigning the int to a textbox I would write a line like

textbox1.Text = (myObj.CustomerCount == int.MinValue) ? "" : myObj.CustomerCount.ToString();


It is the line above that I would like to but in a customer Int Struct so the users can just type

textbox1.Text = myObj.CustomerCount.ToString();

and it will do the type check in the overrided method.

I know you can not inherit from Int (or Int32) so this is where I am stuck. I would appreciate any help or steering in a better direction

I have done this in the past for a "unboundless" array where I inherit from ICollection

and then have

public string this[int index]
		{
			get
			{
				if(index > _arrayList.Count-1)
				{
					return null;
				}
				else
				{
					return _arrayList[index].ToString() == "" ? null : _arrayList[index].ToString();
				}
			}
		}

and

public static DateTime ConvertToDate(string field)
		{
			if (field != null && field.Length == 8) 
				return DateTime.Parse(field.Substring(0, 4) + "/" + field.ToString().Substring(4, 2) + "/" + field.Substring(6, 2));
			else
			{
				return new DateTime();
			}

		}

Thanks in advance.

 

[Aptitude]

You could always create another read-only property on your class called CustomerCountDisplayValue like this:

public string CustomerCountDisplayValue 
        {
            get
            {
                if (myObj.CustomerCount == int.MinValue) 
                    return "";
                else
                    return myObj.CustomerCount.ToString();
            }
        }

 

[mbde]

Thanks Aptitude

What I did was just bit the bullet and created a new class
with a int private variable and then just exposed it by creating a property InnerValue and override the ToString()

This causes the init and assignment to be re-written as such

NewInt customerCount = NewInt();
and
customerCount.InnerValue =5;

but the benefits pay off. It also allows me to init all new variables to MinValue instead of 0.