.NET Framework Collections Creating an initialized List with Custom Types
Example
public class Model
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public bool? Selected { get; set; }
}
Here we have a Class with no constructor with two properties: Name and a nullable boolean property Selected. If we wanted to initialize a List<Model>, there are a few different ways to execute this.
var SelectedEmployees = new List<Model>
{
new Model() {Name = "Item1", Selected = true},
new Model() {Name = "Item2", Selected = false},
new Model() {Name = "Item3", Selected = false},
new Model() {Name = "Item4"}
};
Here, we are creating several new instances of our Model class, and initializing them with data. What if we added a constructor?
public class Model
{
public Model(string name, bool? selected = false)
{
Name = name;
selected = Selected;
}
public string Name { get; set; }
public bool? Selected { get; set; }
}
This allows us to initialize our List a little differently.
var SelectedEmployees = new List<Model>
{
new Model("Mark", true),
new Model("Alexis"),
new Model("")
};
What about a Class where one of the properties is a class itself?
public class Model
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public bool? Selected { get; set; }
}
public class ExtendedModel : Model
{
public ExtendedModel()
{
BaseModel = new Model();
}
public Model BaseModel { get; set; }
public DateTime BirthDate { get; set; }
}
Notice we reverted the constructor on the Model class to simplify the example a little bit.
var SelectedWithBirthDate = new List<ExtendedModel>
{
new ExtendedModel()
{
BaseModel = new Model { Name = "Mark", Selected = true},
BirthDate = new DateTime(2015, 11, 23)
},
new ExtendedModel()
{
BaseModel = new Model { Name = "Random"},
BirthDate = new DateTime(2015, 11, 23)
}
};
Note that we can interchange our List<ExtendedModel> with Collection<ExtendedModel>, ExtendedModel[], object[], or even simply [].
