what type of collection suits to webservices at .Net?

Question

Hi all,
wanna ask for your opinion. What would be the best object (Array, List<>, Collection,...) used in webservice when returning list of business objects. Like a list of customer or history list.

Some ideas:

• because I want minimize amount of data transafered between client and server
• because I want simplify xml serialization
• I dont expect any extra functionality at server side, just simple select

Any tip, opinion most welcome. Cheers, X.

Answer 1

I would use List of the objects you want to return. You can then specify if you want to to appear as array of T or List at the client (I would use List).

Answer 2

All collections are passed in the same manner. I pass as Lists<> because it is easy to manipulate before serilization.

You can configure the consumer to use whatever you want, and it should be deserialized properly.