There are many times that I wanted to be able to quickly update the property values in a collection without needing to create a foreach loop. Sometimes it’s because I needed to do it within a larger query, other times, just because it’s a relatively simple update and like being able to do it in one line of code.
Take for instance this example. I have a list of objects and I want to add a counter value to each. I’m doing this because they collection is sorted, but later processing is threaded, so they come out of that method unsorted again. I wanted a way to quickly get them sorted again so I didn’t have to pass around the sortColumn and sortOrder properties.
List<Contacts> _contacts = GetContactsPagedAsync(1, 25, "LastName", "desc");
int _counter = 1;
_contacts.Select(c => { c.SortOrdinal = _counter++; return c; });
The above code gets the collection and then updates the SortOrdinal property with a counter value.
You can get a little more complex pretty easily, take this:
List<Contacts> _contacts = GetContactsPagedAsync(1, 25);
_contacts.Select(c => { c.FullName = c.FirstName + " " + c.LastName ; return c; });
You can easily call a method from within your code as well, but just keep in mind that this runs synchronously. If the method is simple, we could rewrite the above like:
List<Contacts> _contacts = await GetContactsPagedAsync(1, 25);
_contacts.Select(c => { c.FullName = GetFullName(c); return c; });
Happy LINQing!
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Author: Jack Yasgar
Jack Yasgar has been developing software for various industries for two decades. Currently, he utilizes C#, JQuery, JavaScript, SQL Server with stored procedures and/or Entity Framework to produce MVC responsive web sites that converse to a service layer utilizing RESTful API in Web API 2.0 or Microsoft WCF web services. The infrastructure can be internal, shared or reside in Azure.
Jack has designed dozens of relational databases that use the proper primary keys and foreign keys to allow for data integrity moving forward.
While working in a Scrum/Agile environment, he is a firm believer that quality software comes from quality planning. Without getting caught up in analysis paralysis, it is still possible to achieve a level of design that allows an agile team to move forward quickly while keeping re-work to a minimum.
Jack believes, “The key to long term software success is adhering to the SOLID design principles. Software written quickly, using wizards and other methods can impress the business sponsor / product owner for a short period of time. Once the honeymoon is over, the product owner will stay enamored when the team can implement changes quickly and fix bugs in minutes, not hours or days.”
Jack has become certified by the Object Management Group as OCUP II (OMG Certified UML Professional) in addition to his certification as a Microsoft Certified Professional. The use of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) provides a visual guide to Use Cases and Activities that can guide the product owner in designing software that meets the end user needs. The software development teams then use the same drawings to create their Unit Tests to make sure that the software meets all those needs.
The QA testing team can use the UML drawings as a guide to produce test cases. Once the software is in production, the UML drawings become a reference for business users and support staff to know what decisions are happening behind the scenes to guide their support efforts.
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