Develop Reference

Update a property field in a List

I have a List<Map> and I wanted to update the Map.Target property based from a matching value from another List<Map>.
Basically, the logic is:
If mapsList1.Name is equal to mapsList2.Name
Then mapsList1.Target = mapsList2.Name
The structure of the Map class looks like this:
public class Map {
public Guid Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Target { get; set; }
}
I tried the following but obviously it's not working:
List<Map> mapsList1 = new List<Map>();
List<Map> mapsList2 = new List<Map>();
// populate the 2 lists here
mapsList1.Where(m1 => mapsList2.Where(m2 => m1.Name == m2.Name) ) // don't know what to do next
The count of items in list 1 will be always greater than or equal to the count of items in list 2. No duplicates in both lists.

Assuming there are a small number of items in the lists and only one item in list 1 that matches:
list2.ForEach(l2m => list1.First(l1m => l1m.Name == l2m.Name).Target = l2m.Target);
If there are more than one item in List1 that must be updated, enumerate the entire list1 doing a First on list2.
list1.ForEach(l1m => l1m.Target = list2.FirstOrDefault(l2m => l1.Name == l2m.Name)?.Target ?? l1m.Target);
If there are a large number of items in list2, turn it into a dictionary
var d = list2.ToDictionary(m => m.Name);
list1.ForEach(m => m.Target = d.ContainsKey(m.Name) ? d[m.Name].Target : m.Target);
(Presumably list2 doesn't contain any repeated names)
If list1's names are unique and everything in list2 is in list1, you could even turn list1 into a dictionary and enumerate list2:
var d=list1.ToDictionary(m => m.Name);
list2.ForEach(m => d[m.Name].Target = m.Target);
If List 2 has entries that are not in list1 or list1 has duplicate names, you could use a Lookup instead, you'd just have to do something to avoid a "collection was modified; enumeration may not execute" you'd get if you were trying to modify the list it returns in response to a name
mapsList1.Where(m1 => mapsList2.Where(m2 => m1.Name == m2.Name) ) // don't know what to do next
LINQ Where doesn't really work like that / that's not a statement in itself. The m1 is the entry from list1, and the inner Where would produce an enumerable of list 2 items, but it doesn't result in the Boolean the outer Where is expecting, nor can you do anything to either of the sequences because LINQ operations are not supposed to have side effects. The only thing you can do with a Where is capture or use the sequence it returns in some other operation (like enumerating it), so Where isn't really something you'd use for this operation unless you use it to find all the objects you need to alter. It's probably worth pointing out that ForEach is a list thing, not a LINQ thing, and is basically just another way of writing foreach(var item in someList)

If collections are big enough better approach would be to create a dictionary to lookup the targets:
List<Map> mapsList1 = new List<Map>();
List<Map> mapsList2 = new List<Map>();
var dict = mapsList2
.GroupBy(map => map.Name)
.ToDictionary(maps => maps.Key, maps => maps.First().Target);
foreach (var map in mapsList1)
{
if (dict.TryGetValue(map.Name, out var target))
{
map.Target = target;
}
}
Note, that this will discard any possible name duplicates from mapsList2.

Flatten a Dictionary<int, List<object>>

I have a dictionary which has an integer Key that represents a year, and a Value which is a list of object Channel. I need to flatten the data and create a new object from it.
Currently, my code looks like this:
Dictionary<int, List<Channel>> myDictionary;
foreach(var x in myDictionary)
{
var result = (from a in x.Value
from b in anotherList
where a.ChannelId == b.ChannelId
select new NewObject
{
NewObjectYear = x.Key,
NewObjectName = a.First().ChannelName,
}).ToList();
list.AddRange(result);
}
Notice that I am using the Key to be the value of property NewObjectYear.
I want to get rid of foreach since the dictionary contains a lot of data and doing some joins inside the iteration makes it very slow. So I decided to refactor and came up with this:
var flatten = myDictionary.SelectMany(x => x.Value.Select(y =>
new KeyValuePair<int, Channel>(x.Key, y))).ToList();
But with this, I couldn't get the Key directly. Using something like flatten.Select(x => x.Key) is definitely not the correct way. So I tried finding other ways to flatten that would be favorable for my scenario but failed. I also thought about creating a class which will contain the year and the list from the flattened but I don't know how.
Please help me with this.
Also, is there also another way that doesn't have the need to create a new class?

It seems to me you are trying to do only filtering, you do not need join for that:
var anotherListIDs = new HashSet<int>(anotherList.Select(c => c.ChannelId));
foreach (var x in myDictionary)
{
list.AddRange(x.Value
.Where(c => anotherListIDs.Contains(c.ChannelId))
.Select(c => new NewObject
{
NewObjectYear = x.Key,
NewObjectName = c.First().ChannelName,
}));
}

You do realise, that if the second element of the list in a specific dictionary element has a matching channelId, that you return the first element of this list, don't you?
var otherList = new OtherItem[]
{
new OtherItem() {ChannelId = 1, ...}
}
var dictionary = new Dictionary<int, List<Channel>[]
{
{ 10, // Key
new List<Channel>() // Value
{
new Channel() {ChannelId = 100, Name = "100"},
new Channel() {ChannelId = 1, Name = "1"},
},
};
Although the 2nd element has a matching ChannelId, you return the Name of the first element.
Anyway, let's assume this is what you really want. You are right, your function isn't very efficient.
Your dictionary implements IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<int, List<Channel>>. Therefore every x in your foreach is a KeyValuePair<int, List<Channel>. Every x.Value is a List<Channel>.
So for every element in your dictionary (which is a KeyValuePair<int, List<Channel>), you take the complete list, and perform a full inner join of the complete list with otherList, and for the result you take the key of the KeyValuePair and the first element of the List in the KeyValuePair.
And even though you might not use the complete result, but only the first or the first few, because of FirstOrDefault(), or Take(3), you do this for every element of every list in your Dictionary.
Indeed your query could be much more efficient.
As you use the ChannelIds in your OtherList only to find out if it is present, one of the major improvements would be to convert the ChannelIds of OtherList to a HashSet<int> where you have superior fast lookup to check if the ChannelId of one of the values in your Dictionary is in the HashSet.
So for every element in your dictionary, you only have to check every ChannelId in the list to see if one of them is in the HashSet. As soon as you've found one, you can stop and return only the first element of the List and the Key.
My solution is an extension function of Dictionary>. See Extension Methods Demystified
public static IEnumerable<NewObject> ExtractNewObjects(this Dictionary<int, List<Channel>> dictionary,
IEnumerable<OtherItem> otherList)
{
// I'll only use the ChannelIds of the otherList, so extract them
IEnumerable<int> otherChannelIds = otherList
.Select(otherItem => otherItem.ChannelId);
return dictionary.ExtractNewObjects(otherChannelIds);
}
This calls the other ExtractNewobjects:
public static IEnumerable<NewObject> ExtractNewObjects(this Dictionary<int, List<Channel>> dictionary,
IEnumerable<int> otherChannelIds)
{
var channelIdsSet = new HashSet<int>(otherChannelIds));
// duplicate channelIds will be removed automatically
foreach (KeyValuePair<int, List<Channel>> keyValuePair in dictionary)
{
// is any ChannelId in the list also in otherChannelIdsSet?
// every keyValuePair.Value is a List<Channel>
// every Channel has a ChannelId
// channelId found if any of these ChannelIds in in the HashSet
bool channelIdFound = keyValuePair.Value
.Any(channel => otherChannelIdsSet.Contains(channel.ChannelId);
if (channelIdFound)
{
yield return new NewObject()
{
NewObjectYear = keyValuePair.Key,
NewObjectName = keyValuePair.Value
.Select(channel => channel.ChannelName)
.FirstOrDefault(),
};
}
}
}
usage:
IEnumerable<OtherItem> otherList = ...
Dictionary<int, List<Channel>> dictionary = ...
IEnumerable<Newobject> extractedNewObjects = dictionary.ExtractNewObjects(otherList);
var someNewObjects = extractedNewObjects
.Take(5) // here we see the benefit from the yield return
.ToList();
We can see four efficiency improvements:
the use of HashSet<int> enables a very fast lookup to see if the ChannelId is in OtherList
the use of Any() stops enumerating the List<Channel> as soon as we've found a matching Channelid in the HashSet
the use of yield return makes that you don't enumerate over more elements in your Dictionary than you'll actually use.
The use of Select and FirstOrDefault when creating NewObjectName prevents exceptions if List<Channel> is empty

How to store the result of a linq query in a KeyDictionary variable

So I have a collection of objects who have multiple properties, two of these are groupname and personname. Now I need to count in the collection how many of each object belong to a certain group and person. So in other words, I need to group by groupname, then personname and then count how many objects have this combination. First I created this
public MultiKeyDictionary<string, string, int> GetPersonsPerGroup(IEnumerable<Home> homes ,List<string> gr, List<string> na)
{
List<string> groups = gr;
groups.Add("");
List<string> names = na;
names.Add("");
List<Home> Filtered = homes.ToList();
Filtered.ForEach(h => h.RemoveNull());
var result = new MultiKeyDictionary<string, string, int>();
int counter1 = 0;
foreach (var g in groups)
{
int counter2 = 0;
foreach (var n in names)
{
int counter3 = 0;
foreach (Home h in Filtered)
{
if (h.GroupName == g && h.PersonName == n)
{
counter3++;
if (counter3 > 100)
break;
}
}
if (counter3 > 0)
{
result.Add(g,n,counter3);
}
counter2++;
}
counter1++;
}
Which may look good, but the problem is that the "home" parameter can contain more than 10000 objects, with more than 1500 unique names and around 200 unique groups. Which causes this to iterate like a billion times really slowing my program down. So I need an other way of handling this. Which made me decide to try using linq. Which led to this creation:
var newList = Filtered.GroupBy(x => new { x.GroupName, x.PersonName })
.Select(y => (MultiKeyDictionary<string, string, int>)result.Add(y.Key.GroupName, y.Key.PersonName, y.ToList().Count));
Which gives an error "Cannot convert type 'void' to 'MultiKeyDictionary<string,string,int>' and I have no idea how to solve it. How can I make it so that the result of this query gets stored all in one MultikeyDictionary without having to iterate over each possible combination and counting all of them.
Some information:
MultiKeyDictionary is a class I defined (something I found on here actually), it's just a normal dictionary but with two keys assosiated to one value.
The RemoveNull() method on the Home object makes sure that all the properties of the Home object are not null. If it is the case the value gets sets to something not null ("null", basic date, 0, ...).
The parameters are:
homes = a list of Home objects received from an other class
gr = a list of all the unique groups in the list of homes
na = a list of all the unique names in the list of homes
The same name can occur on different groups
Hopefully someone can help me get further!
Thanks in advance!

Select must return something. You are not returning but only adding to an existing list. Do this instead:
var newList = Filtered.GroupBy(x => new { x.GroupName, x.PersonName }):
var result = new MultiKeyDictionary<string, string, int>);
foreach(var y in newList)
{
result.Add(y.Key.GroupName, y.Key.PersonName, y.ToList().Count));
}
The reason you are getting error below:
"Cannot convert type 'void' to 'MultiKeyDictionary'
is because you are trying to cast the returned value from Add which is void to MultiKeyDictionary<string,string,int> which clearly cannot be done.

If MultiKeyDictionary requires the two keys to match in order to find a result, then you might want to just use a regular Dictionary with a Tuple as a composite type. C# 7 has features that make this pretty easy:
public Dictionary<(string, string), int> GetPersonsPerGroup(IEnumerable<Home> homes ,List<string> gr, List<string> na)
{
return Filtered.GroupBy(x => (x.GroupName, x.PersonName))
.ToDictionary(g => g.Key, g => g.Count);
}
You can even associate optional compile-time names with your tuple's values, by declaring it like this: Dictionary<(string groupName, string personName), int>.

Your grouping key anonymous object should work fine as a standard Dictionary key, so no reason to create a new type of Dictionary unless it offers special access via single keys, so just convert the grouping to a standard Dictionary:
var result = Filtered.GroupBy(f => new { f.GroupName, f.PersonName })
.ToDictionary(fg => fg.Key, fg => fg.Count());

Check if list<t> contains any of another list

I have a list of parameters like this:
public class parameter
{
public string name {get; set;}
public string paramtype {get; set;}
public string source {get; set;}
}
IEnumerable<Parameter> parameters;
And a array of strings i want to check it against.
string[] myStrings = new string[] { "one", "two"};
I want to iterate over the parameter list and check if the source property is equal to any of the myStrings array. I can do this with nested foreach's but i would like to learn how to do it in a nicer way as i have been playing around with linq and like the extension methods on enumerable like where etc so nested foreachs just feel wrong. Is there a more elegant preferred linq/lambda/delegete way to do this.
Thanks

You could use a nested Any() for this check which is available on any Enumerable:
bool hasMatch = myStrings.Any(x => parameters.Any(y => y.source == x));
Faster performing on larger collections would be to project parameters to source and then use Intersect which internally uses a HashSet<T> so instead of O(n^2) for the first approach (the equivalent of two nested loops) you can do the check in O(n) :
bool hasMatch = parameters.Select(x => x.source)
.Intersect(myStrings)
.Any();
Also as a side comment you should capitalize your class names and property names to conform with the C# style guidelines.

Here is a sample to find if there are match elements in another list
List<int> nums1 = new List<int> { 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 };
List<int> nums2 = new List<int> { 1, 3, 6, 9, 12};
if (nums1.Any(x => nums2.Any(y => y == x)))
{
Console.WriteLine("There are equal elements");
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine("No Match Found!");
}

If both the list are too big and when we use lamda expression then it will take a long time to fetch . Better to use linq in this case to fetch parameters list:
var items = (from x in parameters
join y in myStrings on x.Source equals y
select x)
.ToList();

list1.Select(l1 => l1.Id).Intersect(list2.Select(l2 => l2.Id)).ToList();
var list1 = await _service1.GetAll();
var list2 = await _service2.GetAll();
// Create a list of Ids from list1
var list1_Ids = list1.Select(l => l.Id).ToList();
// filter list2 according to list1 Ids
var list2 = list2.Where(l => list1_Ids.Contains(l.Id)).ToList();

Create List<int> from a list<class>

I have a class that is defined like this:
class A
{
int contractID;
string name;
string blah;
etc...
}
Multiple ClassA are stored stored in List(). I and to create a List based off all the ContractID's in List. Is there a way in LINQ to be able to do this instead of iterating through List()?

You can use the Select extension method to create a projection of the contractID. Like:
var listOfClass = new List<ClassA>(); //Or however you get your list.
var contractIDs = listOfClass.Select(x => x.contractID).ToList();

var onlyContractIDs = myList.Select(x => x.contractID).ToList()

List<ClassA> input = ...;
List<int> output = input.Select(a => a.contractID).ToList();
Select is a generic method. Explicitly specified, it would be Select<ClassA, int>, specifying the input and output types.
The ToList() at the end converts from an IEnumerable<int> to a List<int>, and it does the iteration over the input list now, rather than when the IEnumerable<int> is enumerated.

If you have a List you can make a List with LINQ like this
List<int> contractIDs = mycollection.Select(a => a.ContractID).ToList();

var list = new List<ClassA>();
...
list.Select(a => a.ContractID);