Converting from IEnumerable to List

In case you're working with a regular old System.Collections.IEnumerable instead of IEnumerable<T> you can use enumerable.Cast<object>().ToList()


If you're using an implementation of System.Collections.IEnumerable you can do like following to convert it to a List. The following uses Enumerable.Cast method to convert IEnumberable to a Generic List.

//ArrayList Implements IEnumerable interface
ArrayList _provinces = new System.Collections.ArrayList();
_provinces.Add("Western");
_provinces.Add("Eastern");

List<string> provinces = _provinces.Cast<string>().ToList();

If you're using Generic version IEnumerable<T>, The conversion is straight forward. Since both are generics, you can do like below,

IEnumerable<int> values = Enumerable.Range(1, 10);
List<int> valueList = values.ToList();

But if the IEnumerable is null, when you try to convert it to a List, you'll get ArgumentNullException saying Value cannot be null.

IEnumerable<int> values2 = null;
List<int> valueList2 = values2.ToList();

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Therefore as mentioned in the other answer, remember to do a null check before converting it to a List.


You can do this very simply using LINQ.

Make sure this using is at the top of your C# file:

using System.Linq;

Then use the ToList extension method.

Example:

IEnumerable<int> enumerable = Enumerable.Range(1, 300);
List<int> asList = enumerable.ToList();