Singletons are boring, hence factor out the concern

dotnetkicks has an astonishing amount of entries related to “The Singleton”®…

Regardless of whether Singletons are considered harmful or not, I could not resist but provide you with my own take on factoring out the need to get a Singleton which doesn’t feel like a Singleton at all. We can single-ton out any classes that provide a default constructor. Due to the reflection spice you can provide a private one as well. Takes somewhat longer, but you’re only doing it once, don’t you ;) ?

class SingletonOf<T> where T : class
{
  static T instance = (T)Activator.CreateInstance(typeof(T), true);

  public static implicit operator T (SingletonOf<T> singleton) {
    return SingletonOf<T>.instance;
  }
}

The implicit operator makes it possible to do this:

Person p = new SingletonOf<Person>();
Person p2 = new SingletonOf<Person>();
Debug.Assert(object.ReferenceEquals(p, p2), "W00t?! They should be equal!");

Doesn’t it look funny? I find it quite likeable and you definitely don’t pollute the class in question with some singleton boilerplate. I would like to say “Go forth and multiply” but it seems wholly inappropriate for the issue at hand…