Checking if an object is a number in C#

You will simply need to do a type check for each of the basic numeric types.

Here's an extension method that should do the job:

public static bool IsNumber(this object value)
{
    return value is sbyte
            || value is byte
            || value is short
            || value is ushort
            || value is int
            || value is uint
            || value is long
            || value is ulong
            || value is float
            || value is double
            || value is decimal;
}

This should cover all numeric types.

Update

It seems you do actually want to parse the number from a string during deserialisation. In this case, it would probably just be best to use double.TryParse.

string value = "123.3";
double num;
if (!double.TryParse(value, out num))
    throw new InvalidOperationException("Value is not a number.");

Of course, this wouldn't handle very large integers/long decimals, but if that is the case you just need to add additional calls to long.TryParse / decimal.TryParse / whatever else.

Taken from Scott Hanselman's Blog:

public static bool IsNumeric(object expression)
{
    if (expression == null)
    return false;

    double number;
    return Double.TryParse( Convert.ToString( expression
                                            , CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)
                          , System.Globalization.NumberStyles.Any
                          , NumberFormatInfo.InvariantInfo
                          , out number);
}

Take advantage of the IsPrimitive property to make a handy extension method:

public static bool IsNumber(this object obj)
{
    if (Equals(obj, null))
    {
        return false;
    }

    Type objType = obj.GetType();
    objType = Nullable.GetUnderlyingType(objType) ?? objType;

    if (objType.IsPrimitive)
    {
        return objType != typeof(bool) && 
            objType != typeof(char) && 
            objType != typeof(IntPtr) && 
            objType != typeof(UIntPtr);
    }

    return objType == typeof(decimal);
}

EDIT: Fixed as per comments. The generics were removed since .GetType() boxes value types. Also included fix for nullable values.