Cannot implicitly convert type System.Collections.Generic.IList System.Collections.Generic.List

Question

Basically I'm converting a SQL datatable to a generic list which I can successfully do. But I can't figure out how to return the the list object. I get a error that say's a variation of- Cannot implicitly convert type System.Collections.Generic.IList to System.Collections.Generic.List

What would be the correct way to return theList as type List?

public List<MyObject> GetAllMyObjects()
{
    String command = "select * from names ";
    DataTable tableResult = DataTableToList.ExecuteDataTable(command, CommandType.Text, null,connectionString);

    IList<MyObject> theList = DataTableToList.ConvertTo<MyObject>(tableResult);

    return // I’m not sure how to return theList here...
}

Solution

Call ToList on your theList object.

return theList.ToList();

Comments

[tmesser]

Generally you want to return interfaces so things are more loosely coupled, and therefore easier to swap out. Why do you want to return a List<T> specifically?

[Servy]

@YYY Generally I prefer to return the lowest level type possible, unless I'm intentionally obscuring something. If they want to treat it as just the interface that's easy; if they need access to the lower level type (such as in this case) they then need to start doing things like casting, which causes problems.

[user1842828]

This works thank you. The first answer I got that worked was return (List<MyObject>)theList; which also works is there any difference other than the syntax?