Question

I get an error in the bellow code it says I cannot convert method group ListStudents to generic.list, if I try () at the end of ListStudents I get: cant convert array to list

All im trying to do is hardcode some users to an array and return them in my GET request is there a fix for this?

    [WebInvoke(Method = "GET", BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.Bare, RequestFormat = WebMessageFormat.Xml, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Xml, UriTemplate = "")]
    List<Student> GetStudentCollection();
}
[DataContract(Name="Student")]
public class Student
{
    [DataMember(Name = "StudentID")]
    public string StudentID { get; set; }
    [DataMember(Name = "FirstName")]
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    [DataMember(Name = "LastName")]
    public string LastName { get; set; }

}
public class RawDataService : IReceiveData
{
    public Student[] ListStudents()
    {
       List<Student> student = new List<Student>()
       {
           new Student { StudentID="bla", FirstName="bla", LastName="bla"},
           new Student { StudentID="bla1", FirstName="bla1", LastName="bla1"},
           new Student { StudentID="bla2", FirstName="bla2", LastName="bla2"}
       };
        return student.ToArray();
    }

    public List<Student> GetStudentCollection()
    {
        return ListStudents(); //error on this line, cant convert array to list
    }

Answer 1

Try using the ToList linq extension method:

using System.Linq;

...

public Student[] ListStudents()
{
   List<Student> student = new List<Student>()
   {
       new Student { StudentID="bla", FirstName="bla", LastName="bla"},
       new Student { StudentID="bla1", FirstName="bla1", LastName="bla1"},
       new Student { StudentID="bla2", FirstName="bla2", LastName="bla2"}
   };
    return student.ToArray();
}

public List<Student> GetStudentCollection()
{
    return ListStudents().ToList(); //<-- this is the change you need
}

However, to reduce the number of conversions I would suggest changing the methods as follows:

public Student[] ListStudents()
{
   return GetStudentCollection().ToArray();
}

public IList<Student> GetStudentCollection()
{
   var students = new List<Student>()
   {
       new Student { StudentID="bla", FirstName="bla", LastName="bla"},
       new Student { StudentID="bla1", FirstName="bla1", LastName="bla1"},
       new Student { StudentID="bla2", FirstName="bla2", LastName="bla2"}
   };

   return students();
}