C# IEnumerable<T>, how to assign values to the members / properties of T

Question

Below is my structure in c#

  public class Search
    {
        public IEnumerable<Cars> Cardetail { get; set; }
    }

 public class Cars
    {
        public string Id{ get; set; }
        public string StatusCode { get; set; }
        
    }

Now I want to assign data to the Cars.Id and Cars.Status code for unit testig

How to assign it since it is part of the IEnumerbale

I tried like

new Search()
{
 Cardetail = <IEnumerable> Cars{ Id ="1"} // but throws error 
 }

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

var search = new Search
{
    Cardetail = new Car[]
    {
        new Car
        {
            Id = "UniqueId",
            StatusCode = "MyFancyStatusCode"
        }
    }
}

This code should probably do what you're trying to achieve.

When creating an instance of a class with the new keyword, you can use Object and Collection Initializers.

Instead of writing this

var search = new Search();
search.Cardetail = ...

we assign Cardetail in the curly braces.

For Cardetail we have to decide for an implementation to use, since Cardetail is of type IEnumerable<T> which is an Interface and we cannot create instances of interfaces. We need a type which implements this specific interface like Array or List<T> (there are many more).