[c#] Cast received object to a List<object> or IEnumerable<object>

I'm trying to perform the following cast

private void MyMethod(object myObject)  
{  
    if(myObject is IEnumerable)  
    {
        List<object> collection = (List<object>)myObject;  
        ... do something   
    }  
    else  
    {  
        ... do something  
    }  
}

But I always end up with the following excepction:

Unable to cast object of type 'System.Collections.Generic.List1[MySpecificType]' to type 'System.Collections.Generic.List1[System.Object]'

I really need this to work because this method needs to be very generic to receive single objects and collections both of unspecified types.

Is this possible, or is there another way of accomplishing this.

Thank you.

Do you actually need more information than plain IEnumerable gives you? Just cast it to that and use foreach with it. I face exactly the same situation in some bits of Protocol Buffers, and I've found that casting to IEnumerable (or IList to access it like a list) works very well.

You can't cast an IEnumerable<T> to a List<T>.

But you can accomplish this using LINQ:

var result = ((IEnumerable)myObject).Cast<object>().ToList();

Problem is, you're trying to upcast to a richer object. You simply need to add the items to a new list:

if (myObject is IEnumerable)
{
   List<object> list = new List<object>();
   var enumerator = ((IEnumerable) myObject).GetEnumerator();
   while (enumerator.MoveNext())
   {
      list.Add(enumerator.Current);
   }
}

This Code worked for me

List<Object> collection = new List<Object>((IEnumerable<Object>)myObject);

You need to type cast using as operator like this.

private void MyMethod(object myObject)  
{  
if(myObject is IEnumerable)  
{
    List<object> collection = myObject as(List<object>); 
    ... do something   
}  
else  
{  
    ... do something  
}  
}      

Have to join the fun...

    private void TestBench()
    {
        // An object to test
        string[] stringEnumerable = new string[] { "Easy", "as", "Pi" };

        ObjectListFromUnknown(stringEnumerable);
    }

    private void ObjectListFromUnknown(object o)
    {
        if (typeof(IEnumerable<object>).IsAssignableFrom(o.GetType()))
        {
            List<object> listO = ((IEnumerable<object>)o).ToList();
            // Test it
            foreach (var v in listO)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(v);
            }
        }
    }

Nowadays it's like:

var collection = new List<object>(objectVar);

How about

List<object> collection = new List<object>((IEnumerable)myObject);