Convert Object to List in C#

In this fast-evolving world of the C# programming, there appears to be many situations where developers need to go for more optimistic approaches in life. One of these being converting an object into a list. This approach appears to be one of the most common practices when we are working with any sort of data structures and algorithms. It is also a very integral part when we are handling information. In this tutorial, we will be mainly discussing about how we can turn an object into list and what are the different approaches to do the same.

Understanding the basic object and lists

Before we move forward and discuss how we can perform the transformation process between the object and the lists, we have to first understand these two basic concepts in the C# language. An object is primarily something that contains anything such as some data and the actions associated with it. It contains some stuff and qualities which are also known as the attributes and methods which helps us in performing some functions. Whereas on the other hand, lists are basically a container that can withstand or hold a group of items together. They also contain a lot of methods which helps us in handling all those materials or items present in the list.

Ways to perform the Conversion

In this part of the tutorial, we are mainly going to see the ways in which we can convert the object into the list. Here are some of the ways: -

• Physical conversion

One of the simplest ways to convert the objects into the lists is simply doing it manually. Developers can simply go through each of the fields and methods of the objects and figure out what they do and then move ahead and add them manually in the list. Even though this approach has more power and knowledge than all the other ways it can still be cumbersome and exhausting as we have to do it one by one.

• Initialization

In the C# programming language, there’s a simple way in which we can simply approach the list or start the list by engaging or manipulating the properties of an object directly. We don’t have to go ahead and manually perform the conversion process we can simply access it through the methods of the objects directly. One important thing to pay attention when doing this that the list and the object’s actions should match each other, otherwise it can also result in run time errors which we all want to avoid.

• Language Integrated Query

One of the notable features of the C# language is LINQ where we can simply ask questions and manipulate the data. It provides a very straight forward and clear way to covert objects to lists. Developers can simply use this cool feature and pick up some of the special features of these objects and then can put them into the lists. Even though it may add some complexity into our code, it also makes our code very easy to read and understand and also makes it shorter in length.

Example

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

class Person

{

    public string Name { get; set; }

    public int Age { get; set; }

}

class Program

{

    static void Main()

    {

        // In this step we are creating an object

        Person p = new Person

        {

            Name = "Sujoy Ghosh",

            Age = 22

        };

        // In the following step we will be converting that object into list

        List<object> pList = new List<object>

        {

            new { PropertyName = "Name", PropertyValue = p.Name },

            new { PropertyName = "Age", PropertyValue = p.Age }

        };

        // Let's write a function to print the Converted List

        Console.WriteLine("Here is the following Converted List:");

        foreach (var item in pList)

        {

            Console.WriteLine($"{item.GetType().GetProperty("PropertyName").GetValue(item)}: {item.GetType().GetProperty("PropertyValue").GetValue(item)}");

        }

    }

}

Output:

Conclusion

Developers have to often engage in the conversion process of the objects into lists. Its important to know the right and efficient ways to do the same to write efficient and shorter codes. It doesn’t matter which technique you prefer while converting it be it converting the same step by step or using the LINQ feature, we have to make sure our code is readable and understandable to promote code readability and maintainability.