getting System.Collections.Generic.List1[System.Collections.Generic.KeyValuePair2[System.Int32,System.String]] instead of string

Question

I am working on a MS Bot Framework project where I am retrieving the value from a key-value pair from database in C#. Previously I had this:

var list = new List<KeyValuePair<int, string>>()
{
     new KeyValuePair<int, string>(obj,_Obj.Questions)
};

Dictionary<int, string> d = new Dictionary<int, string>
{
  { 1, "Welcome, How are you?" },
  { 2, "Tell me something about yourself."},
  { 3, "How much experience do you have?"},
};

My goal was to bring the Values such as "Welcome, How are you?", "Tell me something about yourself", etc from database. In order to achieve that I did this:

Edit:

Questions.cs

public static string GetChats(int Id)
{


   using (SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("usp_FetchData", con))
   {
   var list = new List<KeyValuePair<int, string>>();

   DataTable dt = new DataTable();
   cmd.CommandType = System.Data.CommandType.StoredProcedure;

   cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@id", Id);

   SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(cmd);
   da.Fill(dt);

   con.Open();

   SqlDataReader reader = cmd.ExecuteReader();

   if (reader.HasRows)
   {
      foreach (DataRow row in dt.Rows)
      {
        string queMsg = row["Description"]?.ToString();
        list.Add(new KeyValuePair<int, string>(Id, queMsg));
      }
    }

 // class property

 public string WelcomeStmt = GetChats(1).ToString();

And the value from above function is getting in this method:

MyDialog.cs // this is the dialog for the Bot

private static async Task<DialogTurnResult> **NameStepAsync**(WaterfallStepContext stepContext, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{

  return await stepContext.PromptAsync(nameof(TextPrompt), new PromptOptions { Prompt = MessageFactory.Text(questions.AskName) }, cancellationToken);
}

I am passing the Id value as 1 in GetChats(Id) method. So based on that, I should get the corresponding Value.

In the NameStepAsync method, I am receiving an unusual parent class I guess instead of actual string that I am expecting.:

System.Collections.Generic.List1[System.Collections.Generic.KeyValuePair2[System.Int32,System.String]].

Does anybody know why this is happening?

Thanks.

Answer 1

The output you're describing is the default behavior of the Object.ToString method, which is to return the fully qualified name of the type of the object. Since List<T> does not override ToString, you are seeing the output you've described.

It can be reproduced by:

Console.WriteLine(list.ToString());   // Or just: Console.WriteLine(list);

If the intent is to output the Value property of each KeyValuePair in the list, we need to first select that property from each item in the list. For example:

var list = new List<KeyValuePair<int, string>>()
{
    new KeyValuePair<int, string> (1, "Welcome, How are you?" ),
    new KeyValuePair<int, string> (2, "Tell me something about yourself."),
    new KeyValuePair<int, string> (3, "How much experience do you have?"),
};

list.ForEach(kvp => Console.WriteLine(kvp.Value));

I realize this answer ignores a great portion of the code you provided, but it doesn't appear to me that the code you've shown is what's causing the output you described. Hopefully this helps some. :)