Question

I am trying to do data binding for MVC controller,
therefore i need a generic class that will turn my classes from:

public class Subsystem
{
     public int Id { get; set; }
     public string Name { get; set; }
}

I need a generic method that will turn this:

public Subsystem[] GetSubsystems()
{
    return new Subsystem[]
               {
                   new Subsystem() {Id=1, Name = "A"},
                   new Subsystem() {Id=2, Name = "B"},
                   new Subsystem() {Id=3, Name = "C"}
               };

}

into this:

public object[] GetSubsystems()
{
    return new object[]
               {
                   new object[] {Id=1, Name = "A"},
                   new object[] {Id=2, Name = "B"},
                   new object[] {Id=3, Name = "C"}
               };
}

Answer 1

I still think this may not be the best solution for what you’re really after, but you can use Linq to transform it to an array of anonymous objects:

public static object[] GetSubsystems()
{
    Subsystem[] subsystems = new Subsystem[]
                                 {
                                     new Subsystem() {Id=1, Name = "A"},
                                     new Subsystem() {Id=2, Name = "B"},
                                     new Subsystem() {Id=3, Name = "C"}
                                 };

   object[] anonymousSubsystems = (from subsystem in subsystems
                                   select (object)(new { Id = subsystem.Id, Name = subsystem.Name })).ToArray();

    return anonymousSubsystems;
}

What you have in your “this” is not actually possible, your result from the Linq query I gave would be equivalent to:

public object[] GetSubsystems() 
{ 
    return new object[] 
                { 
                    new {Id=1, Name = "A"}, 
                    new {Id=2, Name = "B"}, 
                    new {Id=3, Name = "C"} 
                }; 
}