AsEnumerable

The IEnumerable interface defines a template that types can implement for looping. AsEnumerable is a generic method that converts its argument to IEnumerable.

Casting info

AsEnumerable allows you to cast a specific type to its IEnumerable equivalent. So this is a method that performs a cast on its argument and returns it.

Example

We must include the System.Linq namespace to access AsEnumerable. When you have an IEnumerable collection, you typically access it through queries or a foreach-loop.

using System;
using System.Linq;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Create an array type.
        int[] array = new int[2];
        array[0] = 5;
        array[1] = 6;
        // Call AsEnumerable method.
        var query = array.AsEnumerable();
        foreach (var element in query)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(element);
        }
    }
}
5
6
public static IEnumerable<TSource> AsEnumerable<TSource>(
    this IEnumerable<TSource> source)
{
    return source;
}

Output notes

You can see that the value returned by the AsEnumerable method invocation is typed with the implicit type var. This makes the syntax clearer.

A summary

IEnumerable provides a contract that allows a typed collection to be looped over. To get an IEnumerable from a List or array, you can invoke the AsEnumerable extension method.