Question

I get an error on my View page thats says:

Cannot implicitly convert type ‘System.Collections.Generic.List’ to ‘SchoolAdministrator.SchoolAdminProductionServices.SchoolTypeRef’

I want to know how come Im getting these errors. I believe I am doing everything right

Controller

 [SchoolAuthorizeAttribute(AdminRoles = "ViewSchoolTypeRef")]
    public ActionResult ViewSchoolType()
    {
        try
        {
            Guid SchoolTypeRefId = Request["SchoolTypeRefId"] != null ? new Guid(Request["SchoolTypeRefId"]) : Guid.Empty;
            ViewBag.merchantTypeRef = SchoolAdministrator.Models.SchoolAdminProduction.SchoolTypeRef.LoadSchoolTypeRef(SchoolTypeRefId, string.Empty, string.Empty, string.Empty);
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        {
            Commons.ErrorHandling.ReportError("SchoolAdministrator.Controllers.SchoolController ViewSchoolType",e);
        }
        return View();
    }

Model

    public class SchoolTypeRef
{
    /// <summary>
    /// This function allows us to load the School types if parametrs are empty, else load a single user by their ID 
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="SchoolTypeRef">The merchant type ref id, unique ID</param>
    /// <param name="name">name of the School type</param>
    /// <param name="description">description of the School type</param>
    /// <returns>List of all users or list of a single user</returns>
      public static List<SchoolAdminProductionServices.SchoolTypeRef> LoadSchoolTypeRef(Guid SchoolTypeRef, string name, string description, string fdrSchoolTypeCode)
    {
        try
        {
            SchoolAdminProductionServices.SchoolAdminProductionServicesSoapClient client = new SchoolAdminProductionServices.SchoolAdminProductionServicesSoapClient();
            return client.LoadSchoolTypeRef(SchoolTypeRef, name, description, fdrSchoolTypeCode).ToList<SchoolAdminProductionServices.SchoolTypeRef>();
        }
        catch (Exception e)
        { 
            Commons.ErrorHandling.ReportError("SchoolTypeRef.LoadSchoolTypeRef()",e);
        }
        return new List<SchoolAdminProductionServices.SchoolTypeRef>();
    }
   }

View
THIS IS WHERE THE ERROR OCCURRED BETWEEN THE <% %>

   <%SchoolAdministrator.DarkstarAdminProductionServices.SchoolTypeRefmerchantTypeRef =
          ViewBag.SchoolTypeRef ??
            new SchoolAdministrator.SchoolAdminProductionServices.SchoolTypeRef();%>
<table>
 <tr>
       <td colspan="2" class="tableHeader"> School Type Ref Details</td>
   </tr> 
   tr>
       td class="label"> Name:</td>
       td class="content"><%=SchoolTypeRef.name%></td>
   /tr>
    tr>
       td class="label"> Description:</td>
       td class="content"><%=SchoolTypeRef.description%></td>
   /tr>
    tr>
       td class="label"> FDR SchoolType Code:</td>
       td class="content"><%=SchoolTypeRef.fdrSchoolTypeCode%></td>
  /tr>
/table>

Answer 1

Your web service call is returning a List<> of schoolRefTypes, but your view is trying to access the list as if it were a single instance of schoolRefTypes. Instead of assigning a list of schoolRefTypes to the viewbag, assign just one. A quick way to do this is use the .First() method to get the first element on the list. I’d imagine though you’d want to somehow restrict it to a specific schoolRefType based on the MVC convention of ID or something.