Type conversion

Smartstore ships with a flexible conversion framework so strings, numbers, collections and even complex objects can be converted at runtime. The system is built around ITypeConverter implementations that are discovered through a factory.

Built‑in converters

TypeConverterFactory maintains a list of provider classes that supply converters for a target type. By default it wires up providers for attribute based converters, simple primitives, dictionaries and collections. A request for a converter iterates these providers and falls back to DefaultTypeConverter when none matches.

ConvertUtility.TryConvert uses that factory to perform the actual conversion. It first looks for a converter for the destination type and, if none fits, tries the source type while honoring the supplied culture. For convenience, every object exposes Convert<T> extension methods that call into ConvertUtility.

Example

// comma separated string to a list of integers
var ids = "1,2,3".Convert<IList<int>>();

// dictionary to a POCO
var dict = new Dictionary<string, object?> { ["Name"] = "Demo", ["Age"] = 42 };
var person = dict.Convert<Person>();

Custom converters

Implementing ITypeConverter allows converting arbitrary types. Converters can be supplied by a custom ITypeConverterProvider or attached to a type via [TypeConverter] so the factory can discover them automatically. A converter should report supported source/target types via CanConvertFrom/CanConvertTo and implement the conversion logic in ConvertFrom/ConvertTo.

Dictionary converters, for example, can materialize IDictionary<string, object> from a JObject or plain object and also project a dictionary back into a POCO with a default constructor.

Extending

Additional providers may be added to TypeConverterFactory.Providers at application start to register module specific converters. This makes it possible to support domain specific formats or legacy representations without touching core code.