Return a boolean from generic method for boolean return type

Question

I have a generic method

SendHttpRequest<TRequest, TResponse>

that takes in a request-type and a response-type as its generic parameter inputs. The response-type can be either a boolean or a class representing the response.

My task is to return

true

if HTTP request made inside the method is successful and

TResponse

is a

bool

. If instead

TResponse

is of different type, I need to unserialize the response content into

TResponse

object. Returning

true

generates compile-time error. Is there a way to have a single method that supports both boolean and non-boolean return types?

private async Task<TResponse> SendHttpRequest<TRequest, TResponse>(TRequest request)

{

    using (var client = new HttpClient())

    {

        client.BaseAddress = "http://example.com/";



        var response = await client.PostAsJsonAsync("api_path", request).ConfigureAwait(false);



        if (!response.IsSuccessStatusCode)

        {

            throw new MyException(response);

        }



        if (typeof (TResponse) == typeof (bool))

        {

            return true; // Generates compile-time error

        }

        else

        {

            var content = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().ConfigureAwait(false);

            return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<TResponse>(content);

        }

    }

}

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Answer 1

I suppose you already understand that it's a bad design, but if you really want to make it exactly like this, you can do it:

private async Task<TResponse> SendHttpRequest<TRequest, TResponse>(TRequest request)
{
    using (var client = new HttpClient())
    {
        client.BaseAddress = "http://example.com/";

        var response = await client.PostAsJsonAsync("api_path", request).ConfigureAwait(false);

        if (!response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
        {
            throw new MyException(response);
        }

        if (typeof (TResponse) == typeof (bool))
        {
            return (TResponse)(object)true;
        }
        else
        {
            var content = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().ConfigureAwait(false);
            return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<TResponse>(content);
        }
    }
}

Return a boolean from generic method for boolean return type

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