Silverlight generic list inside a class turning into observable collection when being called from a webservice

Question

I am retreiving a class from a webservice and in this class there is a generic list, but somehow it is being turned into an ObservableCollection. I configured the webservice collection type to Generic Lists but to no avail. Is there a reason as to why this is happening?

Answer 1

Silverlight needs to use observable collections to be able to bind to collections properly (well collections that implement INotifyCollectionChanged). I wouldn't be surprised if this happens automatically if you're using all the webservice stuff inside Visual Studio.

Answer 2

This is a configuration of the service reference. In visual studio, just right click on the service reference and edit the properties. There should be a setting for collection type. By default this is set to ObservableCollection

Edit: just looked at my solution, the context menu option is "Configure Service Reference" and the property to set is "Collection Type". You can also set the dictionary type to use.