OneOf in C#

How do we return several types from a single method using OneOf<T0, …Tn> in C#

Introduction

In every c# dot net project, I have used the OneOf library (OneOf<T0, …Tn>) to return various return types from a single method.

As a backend developer, I have primarily used this package to return the objects, validation errors, and try..catch errors from the service.

OneOf<T0, …Tn> Class Library In C#

In c#, Oneof<T0, …Tn> is a Discriminated Union, Discriminated Unions are a programming convenience that shows that something is one of the multiple types of objects.

Mostly, This library is used to return a variety of object types from the method.

When to use OneOf<T0, …Tn> library

We have a service method to get the user details, we want to return validation error, authentication error, or finally user details if everything is well.

We have a user-defined method/function to get particular data from the user details like name(string), age(number) or salary(real numbers), etc.

Steps to install OneOf<T0, …Tn>

Open the manage NuGet package and search for OneOf and install it.

Or

We can use the following command to install OneOf<> from the package manager console.

Other ways to install can be found here.

After we’ve installed this library, make sure it’s installed properly or not.

Some Important Properties of OneOf<>

There are 2 main properties while using OneOf<>.

• IsT<index>: This is used to determine which response type is returned by the method.
• AsT<index>: This is used to fetch specific response type values returned by the method.

It will be used like IsT0, IsT1, AsT0, and AsT1, here 0 and 1 are indexes of response types.

Let’s see some examples for this, then we will be more clear about this.

Examples

Let’s assume we have a method to return multiple response types and we need to use this method and get different types of values.

Here is a basic console program to get one of 3 different types of string, boolean, and integer as response and access those values and process ahead.

• using System;
• using OneOf;

namespace ConsoleApp
{
  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
      Program p = new Program();

      var outcome = p.GetDynamicTypeResponse(3); // put parameter as 1,2 or 3 then we can see the different response type output.

      if (outcome.IsT0) // check if response is string type using IsT0(for first type)
      {
        string stringValue = outcome.AsT0; // access to first response type value using AsT0
        Console.WriteLine(stringValue);
      }
      else if (outcome.IsT1) // check if response is int type using IsT0(for second type)
      {
        int integerValue = outcome.AsT1; // access to second response type value using AsT1
        Console.WriteLine(integerValue);
      }
      else // otherwise a response is bool or we can also use IsT2(for the third type)
      {
        bool booleanValue = outcome.AsT2; // access to third response type value using AsT2
        Console.WriteLine(booleanValue);
      }
      Console.ReadKey();
    }
    private OneOf<string, int, bool> GetDynamicTypeResponse(int choice = 1)
    {
      if (choice == 1)
      {
        return "string"; // return string type value
      }
      else if (choice == 2)
      {
         return 10; // return integer type value
      }
      else
      {
        return true; // return boolean type value
      }
    }
  }
}

Let’s assume another example: we have a service method to get details about a student, and we want to return one of the following:

• paged list of student objects
• list of student objects
• validation error
• try..catch the error

public async Task<OneOf<PagedList<StudentDisplayModel>, List<StudentDisplayModel>, Error>> ListStudents
      (int skip = 0, int take = 5, string searchText = "")
{
  try
  {
   //validation
   if (validation condition)
   {
     // return Error;
   }

   //your code

   if (condition)
   {
     return PagedList<object> of StudentDisplayModel
   }

   // return List<object> of studentDisplayModel
  }
  catch (Exception ex)
  {
    // return catch error;
  }
 
}

In Controller you can access services like this:

[HttpGet("list")]
[ProducesResponseType(typeof(PagedList<StudentDisplayModel>), StatusCodes.Status200OK)]
[ProducesResponseType(typeof(List<StudentDisplayModel>), StatusCodes.Status200OK)]
[ProducesResponseType(typeof(ErrorListingItems), StatusCodes.Status400BadRequest)]
public async Task<IActionResult> ListStudents(int skip = 0, int take = 5, string searchText = "",
CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)
{
  var outcome =
  await _studentService.ListStudents(skip, take, searchText, cancellationToken);

  return outcome.IsT0 ? Ok(outcome.AsT0) : outcome.IsT1 ? Ok(outcome.AsT1) : BadRequest(outcome.AsT2);
}

Conclusion

So In this way, we can use OneOf<> to return and access multiple response types from a single method in c#.

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