Develop Reference

Difficulty in Removing Items From List?

I have two lists. The first is of all students and the second is of selected students. I want if I one time select some student they will remove from the all-student list. Here is my code but it doesn't. Students won't get removed.
foreach (var li in ListSelectedStudents.ToList())
{
if (ListAllStudents.Contains(li))
{
ListAllStudents.Remove(li);
}
}

Contains will use equality to determine what is "equal", I am assuming here that your custom class hasn't provided a custom equality implementation, which means the default equatable will be provided for that type and it's just using reference equality. So even though you think two things are "equal", the Contains method doesn't and so doesn't step into the Remove call.
To get that particular code to behave what you need to do is provide an implementation of IEquatable<Student> on the Student class, as described in the remarks here.
In this instance, Contains isn't actually required as Remove will do the same checks. If there is nothing to remove, the Remove call will be transparent, effectively doing nothing.
As has been caught in the comments before I had chance to provide the information, Remove will also rely on IEquatable<Student> (docs) so you still need to provide an implementation, but it will make your code look a little cleaner:
foreach (var li in ListSelectedStudents.ToList())
{
ListAllStudents.Remove(li);
}
There may be various ways to do this without the need to implement the interface, but you won't be able to use your current code for it. I'll leave other answers to field those alternatives as it's Friday and my brain is not yet functioning properly.

have you tried using linq:
ListAllStudents.RemoveAll(m => ListSelectedStudents.Contains(m));
if it does not work, it could be something wrong with the default comparison implemented in the object, and you could either fix the comparer, or do something like:
ListAllStudents.RemoveAll(m => ListSelectedStudents.Any(n=>n.Id == m.Id)); // Assume the Id is the primary key of the object...

Try this:
ListSelectedStudents = ListSelectedStudents.Where(a => !ListSelectedStudents.Contains(a)).Select(a => a).ToList();

Is this possible with IList

I have a public class called Profile. Very simple model class currently with 2 properties; string Name and string Fields. As I develop the project the class will expand but it's not particularly important at the moment.
I have a Global static IList of type Profile called Profiles. I am quite new to manipulating the data in these IEnumerable types but I am looking to update one of the properties of a single profile. I have tried the following but I am receiving an object reference not set exception. The following is where I set the property:
Profiles.Single(x => x.Name == listBoxProfiles.Text).Fields = textBoxFieldName.Text;
The debugger is showing the listbox and textbox text properties both have the correct values so I think that it is the way I am using single that is wrong.
If anyone could shed some light I would be grateful.

A simple amendment to make the code more defensive is all that is required:
var profile = Profiles.SingleOrDefault(x => x.Name == listBoxProfiles.Text);
if (profile != null)
{
profile.Fields = textBoxFieldName.Text;
}
else
{
Profiles.Add(new Profile(textBoxFieldName.Text));
}
This code will cope with missing values, SingleOrDefault expects 0 or 1 items to be returned. It will throw an exception if more than 1 items are found.
If you know your code should always have the item you are looking for, then your code will work - but I'd advise against this style of programming in favour of being a little more defensive.

c# in memory query of objects without linq

We are still using .Net Framework 2.0 / VS 2005 so i do not have LINQ. If i don't want to go with the poor man's LINQ solution, what are some other alternatives for being able to query in memory custom objects in a dictionary?

I'm not sure if one of your poor man's LINQ solution is LINQBridge but I used it for a few weeks and it seemed to be working okay before we actually switched to .NET 3.5 and the real deal.

Dictionary<T> would seem like a good choice, although you haven't provided much information about what you mean by "query." Are you just looking to retrieve data based on some key value? Get a count of total items? Do a sum or average based on some condition? You really need to give more information to get a better answer.

To elaborate on what Chesso said, you'll have to iterate the loop just like LINQ does...
for example:
static T FindFirst<T>(IEnumerable<T> col, Predicate<T> predicate)
{
foreach(T t in col)
{
if(predicate(t))
{
return t;
}
}
return default(T);
}

I was not aware of the Predicate delegate, that seems to be pretty much what i was looking for. As far as the context for which i'm querying:
Say i have a object X with properties A (name, guaranteed to be unique) and B (age)
1) I have a series of objects in a dictionary whose keys are say Property A of a given object, and of course the value is the object iself.
Now i want to retrieve all objects in this dictionary which meet a certain criteria of B, say age > 20.
I can add all the values of the dictionary into a list then call the .FindAll on it, passing in a delegate. I can create an anonymous delegate to do this, but say i will reuse this many times. How can i dynamically specify an age criteria for the delegate method? Would the only choice be to encapsulate the Predicate method in a class, then create a new instance of that class with my criteria as an instance variable?

Null Reference Exception in a Dynamic LINQ Expression

I am using the Dynamic Linq Library / Sample from Microsoft to do ordering on a list. So for example I have the following C# code:
myGrid.DataSource=repository.GetWidgetList()
.OrderBy(sortField + " " + sortDirection).ToList();
I have a case where my Object have a 0:1 relationship with another object, which has a property that might be displayed in the grid. When we try and sort this, it works fine so long as all my Widgets have this child. We are ordering by Child.Name for example. When Child is null however, we get the null reference exception.
I have some options here which I know I could select into an anonymous type and bind to that, I could also expose the Child.Name on the parent object and handle this via code (Which I don't like comprising my object model for this).
In an ideal world I'd like to update the library to handle this case. Before I dive into it, I'm wondering if anyone has ran across this or not and has a solution already?
Edit
Looks like I didn't explain well enough. I am using the Dynamic Linq Library which comes with the C# samples. This library adds some nice extensions that let you use a string inplace of a lambda expression So my code is actually something like this:
private void BindGrid(sortField,sortDirection)
{
this.grid.DataSource=....OrderBy("MyField ASC")....
}
Of course the string there is replaced with the parameters. But this allows us to change the sorting dynamically as the user clicks on a grid header. We don't have to if then else logic to handle all the permutations.
My solution as I documented bellow changes my nice clean method into:
private void BindGrid()
{
var sortField=this._sortField;
if (sortField=="Child.Name")
{
sortField="iif(Child==null,null,Child.Name)";
}
this.grid.DataSource=repository.GetWidgetList()
.OrderBy(sortField + " " + this._sortDirection)
.ToList();
}
And while this works, this now means I have to update this code as we add new fields or properties which we want to expose in the grid which are on a child object.

If I understand you correctly, I think you want this:
repository.GetParentObjects()
.OrderBy(p => p.Child == null ? "" : p.Child.Name);
LINQ will be able to generate SQL that mimics this expression.

On solution I've found which in my case is not ideal again would be to detect when the expression is going to access the child, to change the sort expression to be
iif(Child == null,null,Child.Name) ASC
Ideally this logic can be baked into the dynamic library, I'd rather not have to modify each grid all over the place to handle all the cases this will impact.

I had the same issue but the best solution I found was to make your code a little more generic by changing it into this:
private void BindGrid()
{
var sortField = this._sortField;
var splitted_sortField = this._sortField.Split(new char[]{'.'}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
if (splitted_sortField.Length > 1)
{
sortField = "iif("+splitted_sortField[0]+"==null,null,"+sortField+")";
}
this.grid.DataSource = repository.GetWidgetList()
.OrderBy(sortField + " " + this._sortDirection)
.ToList();
}
Not perfect, won't like give access to childs of childs, but saves u from updating your code every time u get a new nullable child.

I don't really understand the problem (maybe because it is friday evening here already...), but can't you sort the list like this:
myGrid.DataSource=repository.GetWidgetList()
.OrderBy(w => w.SortField).ToList();
where SortField is the property you want to sort on.
This should work even when the value is null...
Sorry if it's maybe completely beside the point...

Common problem for me in C#, is my solution good, stupid, reasonable? (Advanced Beginner)

Ok, understand that I come from Cold Fusion so I tend to think of things in a CF sort of way, and C# and CF are as different as can be in general approach.
So the problem is: I want to pull a "table" (thats how I think of it) of data from a SQL database via LINQ and then I want to do some computations on it in memory. This "table" contains 6 or 7 values of a couple different types.
Right now, my solution is that I do the LINQ query using a Generic List of a custom Type. So my example is the RelevanceTable. I pull some data out that I want to do some evaluation of the data, which first start with .Contains. It appears that .Contains wants to act on the whole list or nothing. So I can use it if I have List<string>, but if I have List<ReferenceTableEntry> where ReferenceTableEntry is my custom type, I would need to override the IEquatable and tell the compiler what exactly "Equals" means.
While this doesn't seem unreasonable, it does seem like a long way to go for a simple problem so I have this sneaking suspicion that my approach is flawed from the get go.
If I want to use LINQ and .Contains, is overriding the Interface the only way? It seems like if there way just a way to say which field to operate on. Is there another collection type besides LIST that maybe has this ability. I have started using List a lot for this and while I have looked and looked, a see some other but not necessarily superior approaches.
I'm not looking for some fine point of performance or compactness or readability, just wondering if I am using a Phillips head screwdriver in a Hex screw. If my approach is a "decent" one, but not the best of course I'd like to know a better, but just knowing that its in the ballpark would give me little "Yeah! I'm not stupid!" and I would finish at least what I am doing completely before switch to another method.
Hope I explained that well enough. Thanks for you help.

What exactly is it you want to do with the table? It isn't clear. However, the standard LINQ (-to-Objects) methods will be available on any typed collection (including List<T>), allowing any range of Where, First, Any, All, etc.
So: what is you are trying to do? If you had the table, what value(s) do you want?
As a guess (based on the Contains stuff) - do you just want:
bool x= table.Any(x=>x.Foo == foo); // or someObj.Foo
?

There are overloads for some of the methods in the List class that takes a delegate (optionally in the form of a lambda expression), that you can use to specify what field to look for.
For example, to look for the item where the Id property is 42:
ReferenceTableEntry found = theList.Find(r => r.Id == 42);
The found variable will have a reference to the first item that matches, or null if no item matched.
There are also some LINQ extensions that takes a delegate or an expression. This will do the same as the Find method:
ReferenceTableEntry found = theList.FirstOrDefault(r => r.Id == 42);

Ok, so if I'm reading this correctly you want to use the contains method. When using this with collections of objects (such as ReferenceTableEntry) you need to be careful because what you're saying is you're checking to see if the collection contains an object that IS the same as the object you're comparing against.
If you use the .Find() or .FindAll() method you can specify the criteria that you want to match on using an anonymous method.
So for example if you want to find all ReferenceTableEntry records in your list that have an Id greater than 1 you could do something like this
List<ReferenceTableEntry> listToSearch = //populate list here
var matches = listToSearch.FindAll(x => x.Id > 1);
matches will be a list of ReferenceTableEntry records that have an ID greater than 1.
having said all that, it's not completely clear that this is what you're trying to do.

Here is the LINQ query involved that creates the object I am talking about, and the problem line is:
.Where (searchWord => queryTerms.Contains(searchWord.Word))
List<queryTerm> queryTerms = MakeQueryTermList();
public static List<RelevanceTableEntry> CreateRelevanceTable(List<queryTerm> queryTerms)
{
SearchDataContext myContext = new SearchDataContext();
var productRelevance = (from pwords in myContext.SearchWordOccuranceProducts
where (myContext.SearchUniqueWords
.Where (searchWord => queryTerms.Contains(searchWord.Word))
.Select (searchWord => searchWord.Id)).Contains(pwords.WordId)
orderby pwords.WordId
select new {pwords.WordId, pwords.Weight, pwords.Position, pwords.ProductId});
}
This query returns a list of WordId's that match the submitted search string (when it was List and it was just the word, that works fine, because as an answerer mentioned before, they were the same type of objects). My custom type here is queryTerms, a List that contains WordId, ProductId, Position, and Weight. From there I go about calculating the relevance by doing various operations on the created object. Sum "Weight" by product, use position matches to bump up Weights, etc. My point for keeping this separate was that the rules for doing those operations will change, but the basic factors involved will not. I would have even rather it be MORE separate (I'm still learning, I don't want to get fancy) but the rules for local and interpreted LINQ queries seems to trip me up when I do.
Since CF has supported queries of queries forever, that's how I tend to lean. Pull the data you need from the db, then do your operations (which includes queries with Aggregate functions) on the in-memory table.
I hope that makes it more clear.