Dictionary with single item - c#

In the case where Dictionary<object, object> myDictionary happens to contain a single item, what is the best way to retrieve the value object (if I don't care about the key) ?
if (myDictionary.Count == 1)
{
// Doesn't work
object obj = myDictionary.Values[0];
}
Thanks

Depending on wether you want it to fail if there's multiple object or not you can use either
myDictionary.Value.Single();//Will fail if there's more than one
or
myDictionary.Value.First();//Will just return the first regardless of the count

object obj = myDictionary.Values.Single();

I would never code for the assumption that there will only be one. If you know there's always going to be exactly one, then why use a dictionary?

You can't get the value directly or by index, you have to either know the key:
object obj = yourDictionary[theKeyThatYouHappenToKnow];
or use an enumerator:
var en = yourDictionary.GetEnumerator();
en.MoveNext();
object obj = en.Current.Value;
en.Dispose();
If you are using framework 3.5, you can also some extension method like Single or First to use the enumerator for you.

I think you can use an iterator.
myDictionary.GetEnumerator().Current

Related

What is the optimal data structure for storing objects with a string key and a bool auxiliary value?

I need a data structure like below, but I need to be able to change the bool value. Other two stay the as they were when they were initialized. What would you use for best performance?
Dictionary<string, (object, bool)> dic = new Dictionary<string, (object, bool)>();
I was thinking of hashtable. But hashtable is like a dictionary with key/value. The object and bool in my example are in concept not like a key/value, because other values of the external dictionary can have the same object (or better yet ... object type). I don't want to make someone looking at my code later on thinking that the object and bool are more related they really are.
EDIT: object in this example is just a place holder. In reality it's a complex object with other objects in it and so on. Procedure before this one makes a bunch of this objects and some of them are deepcopy of the others. They are passed to this procedure. All of the object are here named by some rules and stored in the dictionary. Names are obviously unique. Procedure that comes after will take this dictionary and set the bool value on and off based on the values in the objects themselves and on the values of other bools. Procedure will be recursive until some state is reached.
Number of objects (or dic. entries) is arbitrary but expected to be >100 && <500. Time complexity is O(n).
I am targeting .NET7 (standard).
but I need to be able to change the bool value.
You can just reassign value for the key:
var tuples = new Dictionary<string, (object Obj, bool Bool)>
{
{ "1", (new object(), true) }
};
tuples["1"] = (tuples["1"].Obj, false); // or tuples["1"] = (tuples["1"].Item1, false);
Or
if (tuples.TryGetValue("1", out var c))
{
tuples["1"] = (c.Obj, false);
}
Personally I would leave it at that, but for really high perf scenarios you can look into CollectionMarshall instead of second snippet:
ref var v = ref CollectionsMarshal.GetValueRefOrNullRef(tuples, "1");
if (!Unsafe.IsNullRef(ref v))
{
v.Bool = false;
}
A bit more info - here.
For the 'performance' aspect:
The .NET Dictionary uses hashes to look up the item you need, which is very fast (comparable to a HashTable). I don't expect much performance issues related to this, or at least nothing that can be improved on with other data structures.
Also, you shouldn't worry about performance unless you are doing things a million times in a row + it turns out (in practice) that something is taking a measurable amount of time.
For the 'changing a bool' aspect:
... that is quite a long story.
There are 2 tuple variants in .NET:
The value tuple, created by doing var x = (myObj, myBool), like you are doing.
The x is a struct, and therefore a Value Type. You can actually change x.Item1 or x.Item2 to a new value just fine.
However... if you put x into a Dictionary then you actually put a copy of x (with a copy of its values) into the dictionary, because that is the nature of value types.
When you retrieve it again from the Dictionary, yet another copy is made - which makes modifying the actual tuple inside the Dictionary impossible; any attempt to do so would only modify the last copy you got.
Side story: The .NET Compiler knows this, which is why its refuses to compile code like dic[yourKey].Item2 = newBool; because such code wouldn't do what you might hope it would do. You're basically telling the compiler to create a copy, modify the copy, and then... discard the copy. The compiler requries a variable to store the copy before the rest can even start, but we provided no variable.
The Tuple generic class, or rather a range of generic classes, an instance of which can be created using calls like var x = Tuple.Create(myObj, myBool). These classes however forbid that you change any of their properties, they are always readonly. Tuple class instances can be put in a Dictionary, but they will still be readonly.
So what options are there really to 'modify a value in a tuple' a Dictionary?
Keep using a value tuple, but accept that in order to "change" the tuple inside the Dictionary you'll have to make a new instance (either a copy, or from scratch), set it to the properties that you want, and put that instance (or actualy a copy...) into the dictionary:
// initialize it
var dict = new Dictionary<string, (object, bool)>();
var obj = new object();
dict["abc"] = (obj, true);
// change it
var tmpTuple = dict["abc"]; // get copy
tmpTuple.Item2 = false; // alter copy
dict["abc"] = tmpTuple; // store another copy
// or if you want to avoid the tmp variable
dict["abc"] = (dict["abc"].Item1, false)
Use a custom class instead of the value tuple or a Tuple class, and then put that into the Dictionary:
public class MyPair
{
public object O { get; set; }
public bool B { get; set; }
}
// initialize it
var dict = new Dictionary<string, MyPair>();
var obj = new object();
dict["abc"] = new MyPair { O = obj, B = true };
// change it
dict["abc"].B = false;
So both types of Tuples are OK for objects that you don't want to do a lot with. But both have certain limits in their usage, and sooner or later you may need to start using classes.

C# Iterating over a dictionary passed as a generic

I am having trouble trying to iterate over a dictionary passed to a function as a generic. For example, I have a function that loads data from a DB.
public T Load<T>(...)
This function can be called like so, with which I have no problems;
someclasstype data = Load<someclasstype>(...);
List<someclasstype> data = Load<List<someclasstype>>(...);
I've recently tried to extend this to be able to deal with dictionaries as well, and calling it like so:
Dictionary<long, someclasstype> data = Load<Dictionary<long, someclasstype>>(...)
I can load the data without a problem and store it in the dictionary no problem.
At this stage, the dictionary, with all its keyvaluepairs is stored in a variable called result, and I'm creating an IEnumerable with
IEnumerator resultIdx = ((IEnumerable)result).GetEnumerator();
if (!resultIdx.MoveNext())
return (T)result;
object kvp = resultIdx.Current;
So far so good. I can see the value of the key and the value of the value in a watch, or by mouseover on the kvp variable.
But I cannot figure out how to get the value part of the keyvaluepair from kvp.
// None of these work - I get compile time errors, unboxing errors, or invalid cast errors.
object item = ((KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>)kvp).Value;
object item = ((KeyValuePair<long, object>)kvp).Value;
object item = ((T)kvp).Value // Never had a hope for this, but desperation...
Does anyone have any idea how I can do this?
try adding dynamic kvp = resultIdx.Current; . Then you can use kvp.Value
You can rewrite the function into two functions like.
public T Load<T>(...)
//Or maybe public List<T> Load<T>(...)
and
public Dictionary<long, T> LoadD<T>(...)
Then you can cast result to KeyValuePair<long, T> in LoadD. You can call Load from LoadD to minimize code rewriting.
Answer provided by Dede in comments:
"Use Reflection ?
object key kvp.GetType().GetProperty("Key").GetValue(kvp);
object value kvp.GetType().GetProperty("Value").GetValue(kvp);
Not very optimized, but can work... – Dede 24"

dictionary ContainsKey method

Please explain why dictionary's 'getAt' method fails
List<BString> infoKeys = new List<BString>(infoDict.Keys);
if (infoKeys.Contains(TorrentFileKeyWords.FILES_KEY) == true) //"files"
{
List<BaseType> multiFiles = ((BList)dict[TorrentFileKeyWords.FILES_KEY]).Value; <<< this fails
So infoDict is a Dictionary<String, BString>
Contains on infoDict.Keys is used to find a specific item (of type BString)
But line 4 fails... doesnt have sens
I am not used with c#.. so what methods do I have to override (now i have: GetHashCode, ==, != & equals)
You shouldn’t need to copy your Keys to a new list to perform the lookup. In fact, you can check whether the key is present in the dictionary and retrieve its associated value in a single operation using the TryGetValue method:
BList bList;
if (dict.TryGetValue(TorrentFileKeyWords.FILES_KEY, out bList))
{
List<BaseType> multiFiles = bList.Value;
// use multiFiles here
}
I suspect the problem is that you're using infoDict in one place, and dict in another...
It's not clear why you're creating a list from the keys of infoDict rather than just calling ContainsKey, or (better) using TryGetValue to start with. Additionally, I would advise against a "B" prefix for your type names.

Can I reference an object within a collection by it's name?

I have a Collection object (based on System.Collections.CollectionBase) but to access the values of objects within that collection, I have to use the index currently. Is it possible to get the values based on the name of the object within the collection?
For example, instead of...
MyCollection[0].Value
... how can I do something along the lines of:
MyCollection["Birthday"].Value
In order to do this you would need to have a Dictionary<string,object>. Unfortunately collections only allow random access by index.
You could do something like this:
var item = MyCollection
.Where(x => x.SomeProp == "Birthday")
.FirstOrDefault();
// careful - item could be null here
var value = item.Value;
But this will be nowhere near as efficient as random access by index.
You could use a Dictionary<TKey, TValue> which allows you to access its element by a key. So if the key in your example is a string you could use Dictionary<string, TValue>.
Why do you think objects in a collection have names? They don't. What you can do is use a Dictionary<String, SomethingElse> to enable your syntax.
As others has said, you need a Dictionary<> to do that. If you cannot change the code that provides the collection, you can use LINQ's ToDictionary() method to convert it to a dictionary yourself:
var dict = MyCollection.ToDictionary(obj => obj.Name);
From there on, you can do:
var value = dict["Birthday"].Value;
You could use the this[] accessor
public Item this[string name]
{
get
{
// iterate through the elements of the collection
//and return the one that matches with name
}
}
Have this getter property on your MyCollectionClass
One workaround could be
private const int BIRTHDAY = 0;
var value = MyCollection["Birthday"].Value;

C#: Easy access to the member of a singleton ICollection<>?

I have an ICollection that I know will only ever have one member. Currently, I loop through it, knowing the loop will only ever run once, to grab the value. Is there a cleaner way to do this?
I could alter the persistentState object to return single values, but that would complicate the rest of the interface. It's grabbing data from XML, and for the most part ICollections are appropriate.
// worldMapLinks ensured to be a singleton
ICollection<IDictionary<string, string>> worldMapLinks = persistentState.GetAllOfType("worldMapLink");
string levelName = ""; //worldMapLinks.GetEnumerator().Current['filePath'];
// this loop will only run once
foreach (IDictionary<string, string> dict in worldMapLinks) // hacky hack hack hack
{
levelName = dict["filePath"];
}
// proceed with levelName
loadLevel(levelName);
Here is another example of the same issue:
// meta will be a singleton
ICollection<IDictionary<string, string>> meta = persistentState.GetAllOfType("meta");
foreach (IDictionary<string, string> dict in meta) // this loop should only run once. HACKS.
{
currentLevelName = dict["name"];
currentLevelCaption = dict["teaserCaption"];
}
Yet another example:
private Vector2 startPositionOfKV(ICollection<IDictionary<string, string>> dicts)
{
Vector2 result = new Vector2();
foreach (IDictionary<string, string> dict in dicts) // this loop will only ever run once
{
result.X = Single.Parse(dict["x"]);
result.Y = Single.Parse(dict["y"]);
}
return result;
}
Why not use the Single or FirstOrDefault extension methods?
var levelName = worldMapLinks.Single().Value;
Single has the advantage of enforcing your assumption that there is only 1 value in the enumeration. If this is not true an exception will be raised forcing you to reconsider your logic. FirstOrDefault will return a default value if there is not at least 1 element in the enumeration.
If you can use LINQ-to-objects in your class, use the Single() extension method on the collection if you know there will be exactly one member. Otherwise, if there could be zero or one, use SingleOrDefault()
Why do you have a collection with only one member? It seems that the real answer should be to better design your system rather than rely on any method to retrieve one element from a collection. You say it makes it more complicated, but how? Isn't this solution itself a complication? Is it possible to change the interface to return one element where applicable and a collection elsewhere? Seems like a code smell to me.

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