Which collections object (like dictionary, List ) to use in a web service to serializ

[nathb]

I am building a webservice (not WCF). I need to store two values (name,value pairs) in a method.

Instead of using List<string>, I used Dictionary<string,int>. But it gives me error message saying "Can't serialize the dictionary object.

Which collections object I can use (to be able to serialize) to store name value pair in a webservice .

Thanks much

[jmcilhinney]

It took me less than a minute on the web to find this as a solution to the issue that .NET objects that implement IDictionary cannot be serialised:

http://weblogs.asp.net/pwelter34/arc...03/444961.aspx

[nathb]

Before posting, I googled and came to know that Dictionary object is not serializable. came across the following way to do:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

class Program
{
static void Main()
{
// Shows a List of KeyValuePairs.
var list = new List<KeyValuePair<string, int>>();
list.Add(new KeyValuePair<string, int>("Cat", 1));
list.Add(new KeyValuePair<string, int>("Dog", 2));
list.Add(new KeyValuePair<string, int>("Rabbit", 4));

foreach (var element in list)
{
Console.WriteLine(element);
}
}
}