Question

I have a custom method that returns a collection:

 Course[] catalog = clnt.GetCatalog(new Guid(CurrentUser.MembershipGUID));

I then pass it to my ViewData object:

 ViewData["catalog"] = catalog;

But when i try to access it on my aspx page like so:

   var catalog = ViewData["catalog"] as Course[];

Here’s the method being called:

    public List<Course> GetCatalog()
    {

        using (var db = new BALmsDBContainer())
        {
            List<Course> lst = db.Courses.Include(i => i.Vendor).ToList();
          return lst;
        }
     }

I get catalog is null. My ViewData[“catalog”] object is not null. 100% guarantee on that. How do i cast the ViewData[“catalog”] object back to Course[]?

Answer 1

var catalog = (Course)ViewData["catalog"]

The “as” operator is actually different from an explicit cast, as mentioned here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cscsdfbt(v=vs.100).aspx