Returning a list of integers and using .contains()

Question

I am new to C#, ASP.NET, MVC, LINQ and nearly everything else I'm doing. We've developed a working prototype of an event scheduling system that lists all events for all sites without regard to what site is scheduling what event. We are adapting the prototype to a full release and now want the schedulers to only see events for the sites they schedule.

My initial attempt is to populate a list of integers containing the ID of the sites the scheduler can schedule I would then use .contains to determine if the events are in the logged-in user's list of sites. So I have the following query which works (note that the user cannot yet select multiple sites which is why I am using .FirstOrDefault() because we have some data issues we're working with the customer to address. Also note that I've included the full method further below):

int site = (from u in context.Employees
    join hf in context.SiteHomeFacs on u.Default_Location_Code equals hf.HomeFac
    where u.User_ID == usr
    select hf.siteID).FirstOrDefault();

var sites = new List<int> {site};

return sites;

Now I want to default some roles to being able to schedule all sites and this is where I start having problems (full method here):

public List<int> GetUserSites(string usr)
{
    try
    {
        using (var context = new DBcontext())
        {
            if (HttpContext.Current.User.IsInRole("Owner") || HttpContext.Current.User.IsInRole("Controller"))
            {
                var everySite = (from s in context.Sites
                                 select new List<int> { s.ID });

                return everySite;

            }
            var site = (from u in context.Employees
                join hf in context.SiteHomeFacs on u.Default_Location_Code equals hf.HomeFac
                where u.User_ID == usr
                select new List<int> { hf.siteID }).FirstOrDefault();

            return sites;
        }
    }
    catch (Exception)
    {
        throw;
    }
}

The error at 'return everySite' is:

Cannot implicitly convert type 'System.Linq.IQueryable>' to 'System.Collections.Generic.List'. An explicit conversion exists (are you missing a cast?)

To me it seems counter-intuitive that the query would be acceptable with .FirstOrDefault(), but not without it. Can someone help me to return a list of integer values so I can use .contains? Or suggest a better way over all?

Answer 1

In order to solve this issue , you can do this,

Add a ToList() at the end to convert the IQueryable result returned to an IList,

 var everySite = from s in context.Sites select s.ID ;    
 return everySite.ToList();

EDIT: In order to support large list you could return a HashSet as mentioned in the comment below ,

return new HashSet<int>(everySite);