Returning empty IQueryable<>

Question

I have this method that tries to get a list of things:

 private static IQueryable<Thing> GetThings(int thingsType)         {                 try                 {                     return from thing in entities.thing.Include("thingStuff")                            select thing;                 }                 catch (Exception exception)                 {                     return new EnumerableQuery<Thing>(?????);                 }             }          } 

I want to return an empty IQueryable if I can't for whatever reason get the query to run. I don't want to return NULL because that could break the calling code. Is it possible or am I going totally wrong about this?

Answer 1

These answers are good and do work, however I have always felt using Empty and not creating a new List is cleaner:

Enumerable.Empty<Thing>().AsQueryable(); 

Answer 2

Try the following:

private static IQueryable<Thing> GetThings(int thingsType)     {             IQueryable<Thing> things = new List<Thing>().AsQueryable();             try             {                 things = from thing in entities.thing.Include("thingStuff")                        select thing;                  return things;             }             catch (Exception exception)             {                 return things;             }         }