Why use ICollection and not IEnumerable or List<T> on many-many/one-many relationships?
c#, code-first, entity-framework, icollection
Solution
Usually what you choose will depend on which methods you need access to. In general - `IEnumerable<>` (MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.collections.ienumerable.aspx) for a list of objects that only needs to be iterated through, `ICollection<>` (MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/92t2ye13.aspx) for a list of objects that needs to be iterated through and modified, `List<>` for a list of objects that needs to be iterated through, modified, sorted, etc (See here for a full list: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6sh2ey19.aspx).
From a more specific standpoint, lazy loading comes in to play with choosing the type. By default, navigation properties in Entity Framework come with change tracking and are proxies. In order for the dynamic proxy to be created as a navigation property, the virtual type must implement `ICollection`.
A navigation property that represents the "many" end of a relationship must return a type that implements ICollection, where T is the type of the object at the other end of the relationship. -Requirements for Creating POCO ProxiesMSDN
More information on Defining and Managing RelationshipsMSDN
Problem
I see this a lot in tutorials, with navigation properties as `ICollection<T>`. Is this a mandatory requirement for Entity Framework? Can I use `IEnumerable`? What's the main purpose of using `ICollection` instead of `IEnumerable` or even `List<T>`?