Question

i have written the following query and it is giving error Unable to cast object of type

System.Data.Objects.ObjectQuery'[ITClassifieds.Models.Viewsearch]' to type 'ITClassifieds.Models.Viewsearch'.

my code is as follows

 if (zipcode.Contains(","))//opening of zipcode conatins comma
 {
    do
    {
        zipcode = zipcode.Replace("  ", " ");
        zipcode = zipcode.Replace(", ", ",");

    } while (zipcodecity.Contains("  "));
    char[] separator = new char[] { ',' };
    string[] temparray = zipcode.Split(separator);
    var zipcd = (from u in db.ZipCodes1
                 where u.CityName == temparray[0] && u.StateAbbr == temparray[1] && u.CityType == "D"
                 select new Viewsearch
                 {
                     Zipcode = u.ZIPCode


                 }).Distinct();
    Viewsearch vs = (Viewsearch)zipcd;
    if (zipcd.Count() > 0)
    {
        zipcode = vs.Zipcode;
        locations = "";
    }
    else
    {
        tempStr = "";
        zipcode = "";
    }
}

Answer 1

The Distinct method returns an enumerable collection (in your case, and ObjectQuery<T>, which may contain more than one element. You can’t typecast that directly to an item in the collection, you need to use one of the IEnumerable methods to get it:

Viewsearch vs = zipcd.SingleOrDefault();
if ( vs != null )
{
    zipcode = vs.Zipcode;
    locations = String.Empty;
}
else
{
    zipcode = String.Empty;
    tempStr = String.Empty;
}

SingleOrDefault will throw an exception if there is more than one item in the collection; if that’s a problem, you can also use FirstOrDefault to grab the first item, as one example.

Also, unrelated to your question, but you don’t need the temporary array variable for your string separators. The parameter to the Split method is a params array so you can just call it like this:

string[] temparray = zipcode.Split(',');