#1,117 – foreach Requires IEnumerable Implementation

The foreach statement works on an object that implements IEnumerable<T> or IEnumerable.  It also works on an object whose type has a public GetEnumerator method that returns an IEnumerator<T> or IEnumerator.

Below, we’ve defined a new class that implements IEnumerable<T>.

    public class DogPack : IEnumerable<Dog>
    {
        private List<Dog> thePack;

        public DogPack()
        {
            thePack = new List<Dog>();
        }

        public void Add(Dog d)
        {
            thePack.Add(d);
        }

        // Remove arbitrary dog
        public void Cull()
        {
            if (thePack.Count == 0)
                return;

            if (thePack.Count == 1)
                thePack.RemoveAt(0);
            else
            {
                Random rnd1 = new Random();
                int indRemove = rnd1.Next(thePack.Count);
                thePack.RemoveAt(indRemove);
            }
        }

        // IEnumerable<T> implementation

        public IEnumerator<Dog> GetEnumerator()
        {
            return thePack.GetEnumerator();
        }

        IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
        {
            return GetEnumerator();
        }
    }

We can now use foreach to iterate on an instance of this class.

            DogPack pack = new DogPack();
            pack.Add(new Dog("Lassie", 8));
            pack.Add(new Dog("Shep", 12));
            pack.Add(new Dog("Kirby", 10));
            pack.Add(new Dog("Jack", 15));
            pack.Cull();

            // Who's left?
            foreach (Dog d in pack)
                Console.WriteLine(d);