Possible to assign a data type to an anonymous type's members in a linq query?

Question

If I have a linq query that creates the anonymous type below:

                    select new
                    {
                        lf.id,
                        lf.name,
                        lf.desc,
                        plf.childId
                    };

Is it possible to assign a specific type to one of the members? Specifically I would like to make lf.id a null-able int rather than an int...

Answer 1

Not sure if this would work without trying, but could you do this:

select new
{
  (int?)lf.id,
}

To force the cast?

Edit: looks like no, but I was able to do this:

List<int> il = new List<int>(){1,2,3};
var z = from i in il.AsQueryable<int>()
select new
{
    Foo = (int?)i
};

And that worked fine.

Answer 2

That may not work. In anonymous types, the data type of the property is used. So in the new type, the data type of id would be used to create a property id in the new type.

If the id property in 'lf' is nullable, then you should be able to have it nullable in the anonymous type as well.