How to pass a class type in method arguments?

I'm writing a class to implement a generic file saver/loader. Inside a method I need to take as input the instance of a data class (with some specific fields that vary from instance to instance), load a file from binary and pass the info to that referenced object according to its class type.

How can I pass the type of it's class in the arguments? I need to call the Saver.Load() from a different class somewhere else in my code and use it for many different dataClasses. Is this possible with C#?

Code (CSharp):

1. public void Load(object dataObject, string folderPath, string filename, string format, bool encrypt)
2. {
3. string path = Path.Combine(Application.persistentDataPath, folderPath);
4.         path = Path.Combine(path, filename);
5.         if (File.Exists(path))
6.         {
7.                 BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
8.                 FileStream file = File.Open(path, FileMode.Open);
9.                 dataObject = (dataClass)bf.Deserialize(file);  //  << ----I need a parametric dataClass here------
10.                 file.Close();
11.             }
12. }
13.  

 

You may want to look into generics

A quick example:

Code (csharp):

1. public T Load<T>(string folderPath, string filename, string format, bool encrypt)
2. {
3.   //sanity checks
4.   var bf = new BinaryFormatter();
5.   var file = File.Open(path, FileMode.Open);
6.   T result = (T)bf.Deserialize(file);
7.   file.Close();
8.   return result;
9. }
10. //usage:
11. MyDataClass objToLoad = Load<MyDataClass>(string, string, string, bool);
12.  

 

Thanks, it works nicely for my purposes!