foreach statement cannot operate on variables of type because does not contain a public definition for 'GetEnumerator'

Question

I can't understand why this error occurs:

public string GetStatusText(string abc) {
   string status = "";

   STATUSDTO StatusList = new STATUSDTO();
   StatusList.LoadByMasterWayBill(abc);

   // this method return List<STATUSDTO>    

   bool has190s = false;
   bool hasother = false;

   foreach(V_TMSDetail_STATUSDTO v in StatusList) {
       if (v.Status == "190" || v.Status == "191") has190s = true;
       else hasother = true;
   }

   if (has190s && hasother) status = "Partially Submitted";
   else if (has190s && !hasother) status = "Submitted";
   else if (!has190s && hasother) status = "Not Submitted";

   return status;
}

When I compile this program, it gives me this error:

foreach statement cannot operate on variables of type because does not contain a public definition for 'GetEnumerator'

Please help me to fix it.

We need to see the type declaration of `STATUSDTO` to verify that it is the proper enumerable type. — Ron Beyer, May 20 '15 at 12:31
According error, `StatusList` doesn't implement `IEnumerable` what disallow using it on a `foreach` loop — Claudio Redi, May 20 '15 at 12:33
I don't have enough reputation to comment but this helped me. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11296810/how-do-i-implement-ienumerablet — Marcus, Jul 06 '22 at 20:37

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 20 '15 at 12:34

The foreach statement in C# does only work on collections that implement the System.Collections.IEnumerable or the System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<T>. The error that you get tells you that the collection you have does not contain a definition for the public GetEnumerator method, which is provided by these interfaces.

See https://msdn.microsoft.com/nl-nl/library/ttw7t8t6.aspx for more information.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 20 '15 at 12:33

Its a guess based on the hanging comment... StatusList does not implement an enumerator. I'm guessing you are trying to loop over the list that is returned by LoadByMasterWayBill

var myList = StatusList.LoadByMasterWayBill(abc);

foreach(V_TMSDetail_STATUSDTO v in myList) {
   //code above
}

foreach statement cannot operate on variables of type because does not contain a public definition for 'GetEnumerator'

2 Answers2