List or IList

Question

Can anyone explain to me why I would want to use IList over List in C#?

Related question: Why is it considered bad to expose List<T>

Answer 1

If you are exposing your class through a library that others will use, you generally want to expose it via interfaces rather than concrete implementations. This will help if you decide to change the implementation of your class later to use a different concrete class. In that case the users of your library won't need to update their code since the interface doesn't change.

If you are just using it internally, you may not care so much, and using List<T> may be ok.

Answer 2

The less popular answer is programmers like to pretend their software is going to be re-used the world over, when infact the majority of projects will be maintained by a small amount of people and however nice interface-related soundbites are, you're deluding yourself.

Architecture Astronauts. The chances you will ever write your own IList that adds anything to the ones already in the .NET framework are so remote that it's theoretical jelly tots reserved for "best practices".

Obviously if you are being asked which you use in an interview, you say IList, smile, and both look pleased at yourselves for being so clever. Or for a public facing API, IList. Hopefully you get my point.

Answer 3

Interface is a promise (or a contract).

As it is always with the promises - smaller the better.

Answer 4

Some people say "always use IList<T> instead of List<T>".
They want you to change your method signatures from void Foo(List<T> input) to void Foo(IList<T> input).

These people are wrong.

It's more nuanced than that. If you are returning an IList<T> as part of the public interface to your library, you leave yourself interesting options to perhaps make a custom list in the future. You may not ever need that option, but it's an argument. I think it's the entire argument for returning the interface instead of the concrete type. It's worth mentioning, but in this case it has a serious flaw.

As a minor counterargument, you may find every single caller needs a List<T> anyway, and the calling code is littered with .ToList()

But far more importantly, if you are accepting an IList as a parameter you'd better be careful, because IList<T> and List<T> do not behave the same way. Despite the similarity in name, and despite sharing an interface they do not expose the same contract.

Suppose you have this method:

public Foo(List<int> a)
{
    a.Add(someNumber);
}

A helpful colleague "refactors" the method to accept IList<int>.

Your code is now broken, because int[] implements IList<int>, but is of fixed size. The contract for ICollection<T> (the base of IList<T>) requires the code that uses it to check the IsReadOnly flag before attempting to add or remove items from the collection. The contract for List<T> does not.

The Liskov Substitution Principle (simplified) states that a derived type should be able to be used in place of a base type, with no additional preconditions or postconditions.

This feels like it breaks the Liskov substitution principle.

 int[] array = new[] {1, 2, 3};
 IList<int> ilist = array;

 ilist.Add(4); // throws System.NotSupportedException
 ilist.Insert(0, 0); // throws System.NotSupportedException
 ilist.Remove(3); // throws System.NotSupportedException
 ilist.RemoveAt(0); // throws System.NotSupportedException

But it doesn't. The answer to this is that the example used IList<T>/ICollection<T> wrong. If you use an ICollection<T> you need to check the IsReadOnly flag.

if (!ilist.IsReadOnly)
{
   ilist.Add(4);
   ilist.Insert(0, 0); 
   ilist.Remove(3);
   ilist.RemoveAt(0);
}
else
{
   // what were you planning to do if you were given a read only list anyway?
}

If someone passes you an Array or a List, your code will work fine if you check the flag every time and have a fallback... But really; who does that? Don't you know in advance if your method needs a list that can take additional members; don't you specify that in the method signature? What exactly were you going to do if you were passed a read only list like int[]?

You can substitute a List<T> into code that uses IList<T>/ICollection<T> correctly. You cannot guarantee that you can substitute an IList<T>/ICollection<T> into code that uses List<T>.

There's an appeal to the Single Responsibility Principle / Interface Segregation Principle in a lot of the arguments to use abstractions instead of concrete types - depend on the narrowest possible interface. In most cases, if you are using a List<T> and you think you could use a narrower interface instead - why not IEnumerable<T>? This is often a better fit if you don't need to add items. If you need to add to the collection, use the concrete type, List<T>.

For me IList<T> (and ICollection<T>) is the worst part of the .NET framework. IsReadOnly violates the principle of least surprise. A class, such as Array, which never allows adding, inserting or removing items should not implement an interface with Add, Insert and Remove methods. (see also https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/306105/implementing-an-interface-when-you-dont-need-one-of-the-properties)

Is IList<T> a good fit for your organisation? If a colleague asks you to change a method signature to use IList<T> instead of List<T>, ask them how they'd add an element to an IList<T>. If they don't know about IsReadOnly (and most people don't), then don't use IList<T>. Ever.

---

Note that the IsReadOnly flag comes from ICollection<T>, and indicates whether items can be added or removed from the collection; but just to really confuse things, it does not indicate whether they can be replaced, which in the case of Arrays (which return IsReadOnlys == true) can be.

For more on IsReadOnly, see msdn definition of ICollection<T>.IsReadOnly

Answer 5

List<T> is a specific implementation of IList<T>, which is a container that can be addressed the same way as a linear array T[] using an integer index. When you specify IList<T> as the type of the method's argument, you only specify that you need certain capabilities of the container.

For example, the interface specification does not enforce a specific data structure to be used. The implementation of List<T> happens to the same performance for accessing, deleting and adding elements as a linear array. However, you could imagine an implementation that is backed by a linked list instead, for which adding elements to the end is cheaper (constant-time) but random-access much more expensive. (Note that the .NET LinkedList<T> does not implement IList<T>.)

This example also tells you that there may be situations when you need to specify the implementation, not the interface, in the argument list: In this example, whenever you require a particular access performance characteristic. This is usually guaranteed for a specific implementation of a container (List<T> documentation: "It implements the IList<T> generic interface using an array whose size is dynamically increased as required.").

Additionally, you might want to consider exposing the least functionality you need. For example. if you don't need to change the content of the list, you should probably consider using IEnumerable<T>, which IList<T> extends.

Answer 6

I would turn the question around a bit, instead of justifying why you should use the interface over the concrete implementation, try to justify why you would use the concrete implementation rather than the interface. If you can't justify it, use the interface.

Answer 7

IList<T> is an interface so you can inherit another class and still implement IList<T> while inheriting List<T> prevents you to do so.

For example if there is a class A and your class B inherits it then you can't use List<T>

class A : B, IList<T> { ... }

Answer 8

public void Foo(IList<Bar> list)
{
     // Do Something with the list here.
}

In this case you could pass in any class which implements the IList<Bar> interface. If you used List<Bar> instead, only a List<Bar> instance could be passed in.

The IList<Bar> way is more loosely coupled than the List<Bar> way.

Answer 9

A principle of TDD and OOP generally is programming to an interface not an implementation.

In this specific case since you're essentially talking about a language construct, not a custom one it generally won't matter, but say for example that you found List didn't support something you needed. If you had used IList in the rest of the app you could extend List with your own custom class and still be able to pass that around without refactoring.

The cost to do this is minimal, why not save yourself the headache later? It's what the interface principle is all about.

Answer 10

Supprising that none of these List vs IList questions (or answers) mentions the signature difference. (Which is why I searched for this question on SO!)

So here's the methods contained by List that are not found in IList, at least as of .NET 4.5 (circa 2015)

• AddRange
• AsReadOnly
• BinarySearch
• Capacity
• ConvertAll
• Exists
• Find
• FindAll
• FindIndex
• FindLast
• FindLastIndex
• ForEach
• GetRange
• InsertRange
• LastIndexOf
• RemoveAll
• RemoveRange
• Reverse
• Sort
• ToArray
• TrimExcess
• TrueForAll

Answer 11

The most important case for using interfaces over implementations is in the parameters to your API. If your API takes a List parameter, then anyone who uses it has to use List. If the parameter type is IList, then the caller has much more freedom, and can use classes you never heard about, which may not even have existed when your code was written.

Answer 12

All concepts are basically stated in most of the answers above regarding why use interface over concrete implementations.

IList<T> defines those methods (not including extension methods)

IList<T> MSDN link

1. Add
2. Clear
3. Contains
4. CopyTo
5. GetEnumerator
6. IndexOf
7. Insert
8. Remove
9. RemoveAt

List<T> implements those nine methods (not including extension methods), on top of that it has about 41 public methods, which weighs in your consideration of which one to use in your application.

List<T> MSDN link

Answer 13

What if .NET 5.0 replaces System.Collections.Generic.List<T> to System.Collection.Generics.LinearList<T>. .NET always owns the name List<T> but they guarantee that IList<T> is a contract. So IMHO we (atleast I) are not supposed to use someone's name (though it is .NET in this case) and get into trouble later.

In case of using IList<T>, the caller is always guareented things to work, and the implementer is free to change the underlying collection to any alternative concrete implementation of IList

Answer 14

You would because defining an IList or an ICollection would open up for other implementations of your interfaces.

You might want to have an IOrderRepository that defines a collection of orders in either a IList or ICollection. You could then have different kinds of implementations to provide a list of orders as long as they conform to "rules" defined by your IList or ICollection.

Answer 15

IList<> is almost always preferable as per the other poster's advice, however note there is a bug in .NET 3.5 sp 1 when running an IList<> through more than one cycle of serialization / deserialization with the WCF DataContractSerializer.

There is now a SP to fix this bug : KB 971030

Answer 16

The interface ensures that you at least get the methods you are expecting; being aware of the definition of the interface ie. all abstract methods that are there to be implemented by any class inheriting the interface. so if some one makes a huge class of his own with several methods besides the ones he inherited from the interface for some addition functionality, and those are of no use to you, its better to use a reference to a subclass (in this case the interface) and assign the concrete class object to it.

additional advantage is that your code is safe from any changes to concrete class as you are subscribing to only few of the methods of concrete class and those are the ones that are going to be there as long as the concrete class inherits from the interface you are using. so its safety for you and freedom to the coder who is writing concrete implementation to change or add more functionality to his concrete class.

Answer 17

You can look at this argument from several angles including the one of a purely OO approach which says to program against an Interface not an implementation. With this thought, using IList follows the same principal as passing around and using Interfaces that you define from scratch. I also believe in the scalability and flexibility factors provided by an Interface in general. If a class implmenting IList<T> needs to be extended or changed, the consuming code does not have to change; it knows what the IList Interface contract adheres to. However using a concrete implementation and List<T> on a class that changes, could cause the calling code to need to be changed as well. This is because a class adhering to IList<T> guarantees a certain behavior that is not guaranteed by a concrete type using List<T>.

Also having the power to do something like modify the default implementation of List<T> on a class Implementing IList<T> for say the .Add, .Remove or any other IList method gives the developer a lot of flexibility and power, otherwise predefined by List<T>

Answer 18

Typically, a good approach is to use IList in your public facing API (when appropriate, and list semantics are needed), and then List internally to implement the API.  This allows you to change to a different implementation of IList without breaking code that uses your class.

The class name List may be changed in next .net framework but the interface is never going to change as interface is contract.

Note that, if your API is only going to be used in foreach loops, etc, then you might want to consider just exposing IEnumerable instead.