Question

I have a dictionary<String,Object> and I want to convert it to a List<Customer>
Is there a clever way of doing that?
Any examples?
Thanks

EDITED

Sorry for not explaining properly.
Given the following why is it my result is 0?
Please note I m trying to emulate a live situation and the first key does not make sense and would like to exclude so only customers i should get.
Why does it not work? Thanks for any suggestions

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        List<Customer> oldCustomerList = new List<Customer>
        {
            new Customer {Name = "Jo1", Surname = "Bloggs1"},
            new Customer {Name = "Jo2", Surname = "Bloggs2"},
            new Customer {Name = "Jo3", Surname = "Bloggs3"}
        };
        Dictionary<string,object>mydictionaryList=new Dictionary<string, object>
        {
            {"SillyKey", "Silly Value"},
            {"CustomerKey", oldCustomerList}
        };
        List<Customer> newCustomerList = mydictionaryList.OfType<Customer>().ToList(); 

        newCustomerList.ForEach(i=>Console.WriteLine("{0} {1}", i.Name, i.Surname));
        Console.Read();
    }
}

public class Customer
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Surname { get; set; }
}

Answer 1

There are bound to be ways of doing it, but you haven’t said anything about what’s in a Customer, or what the relationship between the string, the object and the customer is.

Here’s an example which may be appropriate (assuming you’re using .NET 3.5 or higher):

var customers = dictionary.Select(pair => new Customer(pair.Key, pair.Value)
                          .ToList();

Or maybe you’re only interested in the keys, which should be the names of the customers:

var customers = dictionary.Keys.Select(x => new Customer(x))
                               .ToList();

Or maybe each value is already a Customer, but you need to cast:

var customers = dictionary.Values.Cast<Customer>().ToList();

Or maybe some of your values are Customer values but others aren’t, and you want to skip those ones:

var customers = dictionary.Values.OfType<Customer>().ToList();

(You can also use the constructor of List<T> which takes an IEnumerable<T> but I tend to find the ToList extension method more readable.)

---

EDIT: Okay, now we know the requirements, the options are:

List<Customer> customers = dictionary.Values.OfType<List<Customer>>()
                                            .First();

or

List<Customer> customers = dictionary.Values.OfType<List<Customer>>()
                                            .FirstOrDefault();

The latter will leave you with null if there are no such values; the former will throw an exception.