Question

A few years ago I wrote a WCF service, which runs on a Windows 2003 server under IIS. I wrote it using VS 2008, and .NET 3.5. The code in question is this:

public static List<ASILookupTables> GetLookupTableAux(bool UseProduction)
{
ASIClassesDataContext dcASI = new ASIClassesDataContext();

var result = from lookups in dcASI.ASILookupTables4s
                         orderby lookups.SortOrder
                         select lookups;

List<ASILookupTables> list = new List<ASILookupTables>();

foreach (var item in result)
{
    ASILookupTables alt = new ASILookupTables();
    //more lines to add other elements
    list.Add(alt);
}

return list;
}

Now I’m writing a VS 2010 app, using .NET 4.0, to consume this. The code snippet in question in the VS 2010 app is this:

            LookupSvc.LookupsClient proxy = new LookupSvc.LookupsClient();

        //retrieve list of lookup tables
        List<LookupSvc.ASILookupTables> lookupTables = proxy.GetLookupTableAux(true);

However, I’m getting the following error:

“Cannot implicitiy convert type ‘AsiEF.LookupSvc.ASILookupTables[]’ to ‘System.Collections.Generic.List'”

I don’t get it; in the WCF code it looks to me like I’m returning a list. It doesn’t look like I’m returning an array. Is it because the WCF service is in .NET 3.5 and my new project is in .NET 4.0?

Answer 1

You can change in the service reference settings if you want the proxy to use List<T> or T[].

To change the settings, right click the service reference in the project in solution explorer. Pick “Configure Service Reference”. In “Collection type” pick System.Collections.Generic.List.