Question

I have the following class in my model:

public class Notebook : TableServiceEntity
{
    public string NotebookLinksJSON { get; set; }

    public string NotebookLinksCount {
        get {
            var a = NotebookLinksJSON.FromJSONString<Notebook.Link>().Details;
            var b = a.Count();
            return NotebookLinksJSON.FromJSONString<Notebook.Link>().Details.Count();
        }
    }

    public class Link
    {
        public Link() {
            _details = new List<Detail>();
        }
        public IList<Detail> Details { 
            get { return _details; } 
        }

        private List<Detail> _details = new List<Detail>();

        public class Detail
        {
            public string L { get; set; }
            public string R { get; set; }
        }

    }
}

What I want is to have a property NotebookLinksCount that will return the number of details in the NotebookLinksJSON string.

The datatypes of the vars are as follows:

var a = NotebookLinksJSON.FromJSONString<Notebook.Link>().Details;
var b = a.Count();

a is an interface System.Collections.Generic.IList<T>
b is ?? <<< nothing shows when I try to find out what type it is

When I build I get the following error:

Error   3   Non-invocable member 
'System.Collections.Generic.ICollection<S.Storage.Models.Notebook.Link.Detail>.Count' 
cannot be used like a method.   

Can someone help me with some advice as to how I can get the count of NotebookLinks? Also if NotebookLinksJSON is a null then I would like the count to return a zero.

Answer 1

Count is a property. Remove the () and call it like:

NotebookLinksJSON.FromJSONString<Notebook.Link>().Details.Count;

Edit:
Answering a question from @Melissa in the comments: To make it return null in the event that the NotebookLinksJSON object is null, you need a null check.

public int NotebookLinksCount {
    get {
        return (NotebookLinksJSON != null) ?
            NotebookLinksJSON.FromJSONString<Notebook.Link>().Details.Count :
            0;
    }
}

And I recommend changing your NotebookLinksCount property to return an int. Though if you really need a string, you can change it to be that.

public string NotebookLinksCount {
    get {
        return (NotebookLinksJSON != null) ?
            NotebookLinksJSON.FromJSONString<Notebook.Link>().Details.Count.ToString() :
            "0";
    }
}