C#: Implementing Generic Method of Generic Interface Causes Runtime Exception

You have an interface declaration which includes a method signature that has a generic parameter and generic constraints.

Such an interface can be seen below;

interface MyInterface
{
	List<T> WriteDocuments<T>(List<T> listOfEntities)
		where T : MyEntityBase, new();
}

And you also have a implementation class, as shown;

public class MyTextClass : MyInterface
{
	public List<T> WriteDocuments<T>(List<T> listOfEntities)
		where T : MyEntityBase, new()
	{
		return null;
	}
}

This compiles perfectly fine. At runtime however, if you attempt to instanciate the implementation class you will receive an Exception;

“Method XXX … tried to implicitly implement an interface method with weaker type parameter constraints”

According to various posts which turned up from Googling and Microsoft Connect, this is a C# compiler bug, as confirmed in this post.

In lieu of a fix to the C# compiler, there is a workaround, and that is to explicitly implement the interfaces generic methods, as shown below;

public class MyFixedTextClass : MyInterface
{
	List<T> MyInterface.WriteDocuments<T>(List<T> listOfEntities)
	{
		return null;
	}
}

Notice that in the explicit implementation, you must omitt the access modifiers and generic constraints.