Question

I need to restrict the values that I return to my page in a web method without using some sort of proxy object.

Let’s say I have a Car class with the following class

    public class Car
    {
        public int Id { get; set; }
        public string Name { get; set; }
        public string Engine { get; set; }
    }

and a webmethod which looks like;

[WebMethod]
public static List<Car> SearchCars(string search)
{
  var cars = car.All().Where(x => x.name.StartsWith(search));
  return cars.ToList();
}

The list that get’s return to my page has all attributes. How can I exclude say .. the engine attribute so only ID and Name are return?

The above is a purely fictional example, in the real world I’m using Subsonic3 objects to return a list etc.

Answer 1

You can use a projection to select only the fields you want returned. Something like this:

[WebMethod]
public static List<Car> SearchCars(string search)
{
  var cars = car.All().Where(x => x.name.StartsWith(search)).Select(x => new { x.Id, x.Name });
  return cars.ToList();
}