Question

The following code produces the issue

Cannot implicitly convert type 'System.Collections.Generic.IEnumberable<DataField<string>>' to ‘DataFields’. An explicit conversion exists (are you missing a cast?).

How do I get around this? What am I doing wrong?

public class DataFields : List<DataField>
{
}

public abstract class DataField
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

public class DataField<T> : DataField
{
    public T Value { get; set; }
}

public static DataFields ConvertXML(XMLDocument data) {
    DataFields result = (from d in XDocument.Parse(data.OuterXML).Elements()
                      select new DataField<string>
                      {
                          Name = d.Name.ToString(),
                          Value = d.Value
                      }).ToList();
    return result;
}

Edited: Moving the information below to another question.

Using LINQ to create a List<T> where T : someClass<U>

In addition I would like to be able to do something like the following in this statement, in order to set the type of the value for each. How can I accomplish this.

select new DataField<[Attribute of element called type]>
{
  Name = d.Name.ToString(),
  Value = d.Value
}

Answer 1

Add the following constructor to the DataFields class

public class DataFields : List<DataField> {
    public DataFields() : base() {}
    public DataFields(IEnumerable<DataField> items) : base(items){}
}  

Then

public static DataFields ConvertXML(XMLDocument data) {      
    var result = (BLAH..).ToList();      
    return new DataFields(result);     
}