Url: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/745172/better-way-to-cast-object-to-int/745204

You have several options:

(int) — Cast operator. Works if the object already is an integer at some level in the inheritance hierarchy or if there is an implicit conversion defined.

int.Parse()/int.TryParse() — For converting from a string of unknown format.

int.ParseExact()/int.TryParseExact() — For converting from a string in a specific format

Convert.ToInt32() — For converting an object of unknown type. It will use an explicit and implicit conversion or IConvertible implementation if any are defined.

as int? — Note the "?". The as operator is only for reference types, and so I used "?" to signify a Nullable. The "as" operator works like Convert.To____(), but think TryParse() rather than Parse(): it returns null rather than throwing an exception if the conversion fails.