Can I make C# accept T[] instead of List<T>?

[Raildex]

I am generating byte arrays, and the schemas contain

data: [ubyte];

But the resulting (Object API) on the C# side is a List:

  [Newtonsoft.Json.JsonProperty("data")]
  public List<byte> Data { get; set; }

Is there a way to generate it accepting a byte[] instead?

The issue I am having specifically is that I store pixel data.
Generating a List out of my pixel byte arrays just doubles the required memory for this conversion.

[Advait251206]

I don't believe there's currently a schema option that changes the C# Object API from List<T> to T[] for vector fields.

The generated Object API is designed around mutable collections and uses List<T> consistently for vectors, regardless of element type. As a result, fields like:

data:[ubyte];

become:

public List<byte> Data { get; set; }

That said, your concern is very reasonable. For large binary payloads such as pixel buffers, image data, audio samples, etc., converting from byte[] → List<byte> introduces both additional memory usage and copying overhead.

A few possible alternatives:

• Use the regular FlatBuffers API instead of the Object API if performance and memory efficiency are critical.
• Serialize directly from your existing byte[] into the FlatBuffer builder rather than materializing an intermediate object graph.
• Consider extending the C# code generator if this is a common pattern in your application.

For ubyte vectors specifically, it would be interesting if the Object API supported byte[] as a special case, since binary blobs are one of the most common uses of ubyte vectors and arrays are generally a more natural representation than List<byte>.

I'd be interested to hear whether the maintainers have a recommended pattern for large binary data when using the C# Object API.