Accessing Methods of Explicit Interfaces

We have seen on how to implement more than one interface which have methods/properties with the same name and signature using explicit interfaces. Now how do we create instance of the class and call these methods individually.

The following example contains 2 interfaces IEmployee and IDepartment, both the interfaces contain a method GetName() with the same name and signature. The class OfficeClass implements both the interfaces and implements the GetName method from both the interfaces using Explicit Interface Implementation.

    interface IEmployee

    {

        string GetName();

    }

    //

    interface IDepartment

    {

        string GetName();

    }

    //

    class OfficeClass : IEmployee, IDepartment

    {

        string IEmployee.GetName()

        {

            return "test employee";

        }

        //

        string IDepartment.GetName()

        {

            return "test department";

        }

    }

Now let us create an instance of the Office class and call the GetName() methods defined in both the interfaces individually.

    OfficeClass objOfficeClass = new OfficeClass();

    IEmployee objIEmployee = (IEmployee)objOfficeClass;

    IDepartment objIDepartment = (IDepartment)objOfficeClass;

    //

    Console.WriteLine("Call From objIEmployee: " + objIEmployee.GetName());

    Console.WriteLine("Call From objIDepartment: " + objIDepartment.GetName());

The output will be as follows

Call From objIEmployee: test employee

Call From objIDepartment: test department

In case of explicit interfaces we should not try to call the methods directly using the object of the class, trying so will lead to a compiler error as follows.

Console.WriteLine("Call From objOfficeClass : " + objOfficeClass.GetName());

Error:
OfficeClass does not contain a definition for 'GetName' and no extension method 'GetName' accepting a first argument of type 'OfficeClass'