What is equivalent to Microsoft.VisualBasic.Collection in c#?

Question

I have a method which takes a stored procedure name and a Microsoft.VisualBasic.Collection ? I am referencing a vb project in which I have to pass in a collection to this method, but the current project I am in is in c#, so I am unclear what I can pass into the method?

Here is the vb call:

public void CallStoredProc(string spName, Microsoft.VisualBasic.Collection params);

In my c# app, I need to call this an pass in the appropriate c# object to params.

Answer 1

One option is to simply use the Collection type directly from C#. This is a standard type in the Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll assembly and can be used from any.Net language.

The closest collection in the standard BCL though is Hashtable . Converting between Hashtable and Collection should be fairly straight forward

For example

using VBCollection = Microsoft.VisualBasic.Collection;
...
public static VBCollection ToVBCollection(this Hashtable table) {
  var collection = new VBCollection();
  foreach (var pair in table) {
    // Note: The Add method in collection takes value then key.
    collection.Add(pair.Value, pair.Key);  
  }
  return collection;
}

Note: This is not a direct mapping though. The Collection type supports a number of operations which Hashtable does not like: before and after values, index by number or key, etc... My approach would be to use one type consistently throughout the application and change either the C# or VB project appropriately

Answer 2

Unless you can change the method, so that it takes ICollection , IEnumerable or their generic variants, you have to pass an instance of Microsoft.VisualBasic.Collection to that method.

From the point of view of C#, Microsoft.VisualBasic.Collection is just a class and you can work with it as with any other class, ie instance it:

new Microsoft.VisualBasic.Collection()

Of course, you have to reference the assembly Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll in your project.

Answer 3

There is no such thing as a "C# object", or a "VisualBasic.net object" - it is all .net, so you can simply include a reference to Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll and use that Microsoft.VisualBasic.Collection.

C# devs often frown upon Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll because of the name, but you won't be eaten by Velociraptors if you use it since .net is properly and fully language-independent.