List or BusinessObjectCollection?

Question

Prior to C# generics, everyone would code collections for their business objects by creating a collection base that implemented IEnumerable

IE:

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Answer 1

I've been going back and forth on 2 options:

public class BusinessObjectCollection : List<BusinessObject> {}

or methods that just do the following:

public IEnumerable<BusinessObject> GetBusinessObjects();

The benefits of the first approach is that you can change the underlying data store without having to mess with method signatures. Unfortunately if you inherit from a collection type that removes a method from the previous implementation, then you'll have to deal with those situations throughout your code.

Answer 2

I do the exact same thing as you Jonathan... just inherit from List<T>. You get the best of both worlds. But I generally only do it when there is some value to add, like adding a LoadAll() method or whatever.

Answer 3

At the most of the time I simply go with the List way, as it gives me all the functionality I need at the 90% of the time, and when something 'extra' is needed, I inherit from it, and code that extra bit.

Answer 4

I prefer just to use List<BusinessObject>. Typedefing it just adds unnecessary boilerplate to the code. List<BusinessObject> is a specific type, it's not just any List object, so it's still strongly typed.

More importantly, declaring something List<BusinessObject> makes it easier for everyone reading the code to tell what types they are dealing with, they don't have to search through to figure out what a BusinessObjectCollection is and then remember that it's just a list. By typedefing, you'll have to require a consistent (re)naming convention that everyone has to follow in order for it to make sense.

Answer 5

It's recommended that in public API's not to use List<T>, but to use Collection<T>

If you are inheriting from it though, you should be fine, afaik.

Answer 6

You can use both. For laziness - I mean productivity - List is a very useful class, it's also "comprehensive" and frankly full of YANGNI members. Coupled with the sensible argument / recommendation put forward by the MSDN article already linked about exposing List as a public member, I prefer the "third" way:

Personally I use the decorator pattern to expose only what I need from List i.e:

public OrderItemCollection : IEnumerable<OrderItem> 
{
    private readonly List<OrderItem> _orderItems = new List<OrderItem>();

    void Add(OrderItem item)
    {
         _orderItems.Add(item)
    }

    //implement only the list members, which are required from your domain. 
    //ie. sum items, calculate weight etc...

    private IEnumerator<string> Enumerator() {
        return _orderItems.GetEnumerator();
    }

    public IEnumerator<string> GetEnumerator() {
        return Enumerator();
    }    
}

Further still I'd probably abstract OrderItemCollection into IOrderItemCollection so I can swap my implementation of IOrderItemCollection over in the future in (I may prefer to use a different inner enumerable object such as Collection or more likley for perf use a Key Value Pair collection or Set.