I'm having a problem joining two LINQ queries.
Currently, my (original) code looks like this
s.AnimalTypes.Sort((x, y) => string.Compare(x.Type, y.Type));
What I'm needing to do is change this based on a date, then select all data past that date, so I have
s.AnimalTypes.Select(t=>t.DateChanged > dateIn).ToList()
s.AnimalTypes.Sort((…
This doesn't look right as it's not sorting the data selected, rather sorting everything in s.AnimalTypes.
Is there a way to concatenate the two LINQ lines? I've tried
s.AnimalTypes.Select(t=>t.DateChanged > dateIn).ToList().Sort((…
but this gives me an error on the Sort section.
Is there a simple way to do this? I've looked around and Grouo and OrderBy keep cropping up, but I'm not sure these are what I need here.
Thanks
From your description, I believe you want something like:
var results = s.AnimalTypes.Where(t => t.DateChanged > dateIn).OrderBy(t => t.Type);
You can call ToList() to convert to a List<T> at the end if required.
There are a couple of fundamental concepts I believe you are missing here -
First, unlike List<T>.Sort, the LINQ extension methods don't change the original collections, but rather return a new IEnumerable<T> with the filtered or sorted results. This means you always need to assign something to the return value (hence my var results = above).
Second, Select performs a mapping operation - transforming the data from one form to another. For example, you could use it to extract out the DateChanged (Select(t => t.DateChanged)), but this would give you an enumeration of dates, not the original animal types. In order to filter or restrict the list with a predicate (criteria), you'd use Where instead.
Finally, you can use OrderBy to reorder the resulting enumerable.
You are using Select when you actually want to use Where.
Select is a projection from one a collection of one type into another type - you won't increase or reduce the number of items in a collection using Select, but you can instead select each object's name or some other property.
Where is what you would use to filter a collection based on a boolean predicate.
Related
I have a query that fetches books, I'm new to LINQ so I don't know the syntax:
var books = (from book in db.Books
join borrow in db.Borrows on book equals borrow.Book
select new BookDTO { Title = book.Title,
Borrows = book.Borrows.ToList() }).ToList(); // book.Borrows.ToList() <- use dto's instead
How can I select Book.Borrows as a list of objects (BorrowDTO's)? Is there something like Borrows = new List<BorrowDTO>(book.Borrows)
You can use .Select() to project the list into a different type. So instead of this:
Borrows = book.Borrows.ToList()
you would have something like this:
Borrows = book.Borrows.Select(b => new BorrowDTO { /* properties here */ }).ToList()
Note that, depending on your data source, there may be more efficient ways to approach selecting your data. If you're pulling directly from LINQ To Entities then you may run into problems trying to materialize a type within the query that isn't known to the DB, or any other operation that can't be translated into SQL. It's also not necessarily wise to toss in a bunch of .ToList() operations without a specific purpose.
But that's all theoretical at this point in the question. Based on the code shown and on LINQ syntax itself, you can select from a list just fine. (I'd even recomment using the extension method syntax more than the query syntax that you currently use. Personal preference of course, but I find it easier and more intuitive to build nested operations like this. Though you can just as well use the from ... select ... syntax after Borrows =, I would imagine.)
Just select book.Borrows instead of creating a new temporal object.
That query is going to return a IEnumerable of the Borrows type; and you'll be able to iterate through it and convert it into a List if you please
I'm looking for a clean way to write this Linq query.
Basically I have a collection of objects with id's, then using nhibernate and Linq, I need to check if the nhibernate entity has a subclass collection where all id's in object collection exist in the nhibernate subclass collection.
If there was just one item this would work:
var objectImCheckingAgainst = ... //irrelevant
where Obj.SubObj.Any(a => a.id == objectImCheckingAgainst.Id)
Now I want to instead somehow pass a list of objectImCheckingAgainst and return true only if the Obj.SubObj collection contains all items in list of objectImCheckingAgainst based on Id.
I like to use GroupJoin for this.
return objectImCheckingAgainst.GroupJoin(Obj.SubObj,
a => a.Id,
b => b.id,
(a, b) => b.Any())
.All(c => c);
I believe this query should be more or less self-explanatory, but essentially, this joins the two collections using their respective ids as keys, then groups those results. Then for each of those groupings, it determines whether any matches exist. Finally, it ensures that all groupings had matches.
A useful alternative that I sometimes use is .Count() == 1 instead of the .Any(). Obviously, the difference there is whether you want to support multiple elements with the same id matching. From your description, it sounded like that either doesn't matter or is enforced by another means. But that's an easy swap, either way.
An important concept in GroupJoin that I know is relevant, but may or may not be obvious, is that the first enumerable (which is to say, the first argument to the extension method, or objectImCheckingAgainst in this example) will have all its elements included in the result, but the second one may or may not. It's not like Join, where the ordering is irrelevant. If you're used to SQL, these are the elementary beginnings of a LEFT OUTER JOIN.
Another way you could accomplish this, somewhat more simply but not as efficiently, would be to simply nest the queries:
return objectImCheckingAgainst.All(c => Obj.SubObj.Any(x => x.id == c.Id));
I say this because it's pretty similar to the example you provided.
I don't have any experience with NHibernate, but I know many ORMs (I believe EF included) will map this to SQL, so efficiency may or may not be a concern. But in general, I like to write LINQ as close to par as I can so it works as well in memory as against a database, so I'd go with the first one I mentioned.
I'm not well versed in LINQ-to-NHibernate but when using LINQ against any SQL backen it's always important to keep an eye on the generated SQL. I think this where clause...
where Obj.SubObj.All(a => idList.Contains(a.id))
...will produce the best SQL (having an IN statement).
idList is a list of Ids extracted from the list of objectImCheckingAgainst objects.
Is there a way to get the IQueryable object that the LinqDataSource has used to retrieve data? I thought that it might be possible from the selected event, but it doesn't appear to be.
Each row in my table has a category field, and I want to determine how many rows there are per category in the results.
I should also note that I'm using a DataPager, so not all of the rows are being returned. That's why I want to get the IQueryable, so that I can do something like
int count = query.Where(i => i.Category == "Category1").Count();
Use the QueryCreated event. QueryCreatedEventArgs has a Query property that contains the IQueryable.
The event is raised after the original LINQ query is created, and contains the query expression before to it is sent to the database, without the ordering and paging parameters.
There's no "Selected" event in IQueryable. Furthermore, if you're filtering your data on the server, there'd be no way you can access it, even if the API exposed it, but to answer a part of the question, let's say you have category -> product where each category has many products and you want the count of the products in each category. It'd be a simple LINQ query:
var query = GetListOfCategories();
var categoryCount = query.Select(c => c.Products).Count();
Again, depending on the type of object GetListOfCategories return, you might end up having correct value for all the entries, or just the ones that are loaded and are in memory, but that's the different between Linq-to-Objects (in memory) and Linq-to-other data sources (lazy loaded).
I am looking for a way to have a query that returns a tuple first sorted by a column, then grouped by another (in that order). Simply .sort_by().group_by() didn't appear to work. Now I tried the following, which made the return value go wrong (I just got the orm object, not the initial tuple), but read for yourself in detail:
Base scenario:
There is a query which queries for test orm objects linked from the test3 table through foreign keys.
This query also returns a column named linked that either contains true or false. It is originally ungrouped.
my_query = session.query(test_orm_object)
... lots of stuff like joining various things ...
add_column(..condition that either puts 'true' or 'false' into the column..)
So the original return value is a tuple (the orm object, and additionally the true/false column).
Now this query should be grouped for the test orm objects (so the test.id column), but before that, sorted by the linked column so entries with true are preferred during the grouping.
Assuming the current unsorted, ungrouped query is stored in my_query, my approach to achieve this was this:
# Get a sorted subquery
tmpquery = my_query.order_by(desc('linked')).subquery()
# Read the column out of the sub query
my_query = session.query(tmpquery).add_columns(getattr(tmpquery.c,'linked').label('linked'))
my_query = my_query.group_by(getattr(tmpquery.c, 'id')) # Group objects
The resulting SQL query when running this is (it looks fine to me btw - the subquery 'anon_1' is inside itself properly sorted, then fetched and its id aswell as the 'linked' column is extracted (amongst a few other columns SQLAlchemy wants to have apparently), and the result is properly grouped):
SELECT anon_1.id AS anon_1_id, anon_1.name AS anon_1_name, anon_1.fk_test3 AS anon_1_fk_test3, anon_1.linked AS anon_1_linked, anon_1.linked AS linked
FROM (
SELECT test.id AS id, test.name AS name, test.fk_test3 AS fk_test3, CASE WHEN (anon_2.id = 87799534) THEN 'true' ELSE 'false' END AS linked
FROM test LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT test3.id AS id, test3.fk_testvalue AS fk_testvalue
FROM test3)
AS anon_2 ON anon_2.fk_testvalue = test.id ORDER BY linked DESC
)
AS anon_1 GROUP BY anon_1.id
I tested it in phpmyadmin, where it gave me, as expected, the id column (for the orm object id), then the additional columns SQL_Alchemy seems to want there, and the linked column. So far, so good.
Now my expected return values would be, as they were from the original unsorted, ungrouped query:
A tuple: 'test' orm object (anon_1.id column), 'true'/'false' value (linked column)
The actual return value of the new sorted/grouped query is however (the original query DOES indeed return a touple before the code above is applied):
'test' orm object only
Why is that so and how can I fix it?
Excuse me if that approach turns out to be somewhat flawed.
What I actually want is, have the original query simply sorted, then grouped without touching the return values. As you can see above, my attempt was to 'restore' the additional return value again, but that didn't work. What should I do instead, if this approach is fundamentally wrong?
Explanation for the subquery use:
The point of the whole subquery is to force SQLAlchemy to execute this query separately as a first step.
I want to order the results first, and then group the ordered results. That seems to be hard to do properly in one step (when trying manually with SQL I had issues combining order and group by in one step as I wanted).
Therefore I don't simply order, group, but I order first, then subquery it to enforce that the order step is actually completed first, and then I group it.
Judging from manual PHPMyAdmin tests with the generated SQL, this seems to work fine. The actual problem is that the original query (which is now wrapped as the subquery you were confused about) had an added column, and now by wrapping it up as a subquery, that column is gone from the overall result. And my attempt to readd it to the outer wrapping failed.
It would be much better if you provided examples. I don't know if these columns are in separate tables or what not. Just looking at your first paragraph, I would do something like this:
a = session.query(Table1, Table2.column).\
join(Table2, Table1.foreign_key == Table2.id).\
filter(...).group_by(Table2.id).order_by(Table1.property.desc()).all()
I don't know exactly what you're trying to do since I need to look at your actual model, but it should look something like this with maybe the tables/objs flipped around or more filters.
I have a list (List) of objects.
Each of those objects contains a list (List) of strings describing them.
I'm needing to create a dropdown containing all of the distinct strings used to describe the objects (Cards). To do this, I need a list of distinct strings used.
Any idea how/if this can be done with LINQ?
You can use the SelectMany extension method/operator to flatten a collection into the individual elements.
listOfObjects.SelectMany(x => x.DescriptionStrings).Distinct()
This will select all the strings out of the collection of description strings for each object in your list of objects.
LINQ has a Distinct function.
Assuming "_cards" exists as instance variable of List and Card.Descriptions returns the descriptions and "cardsComboBox" (in WinForms):
cardsComboBox.AutoCompleteSource = _cards.SelectMany(c => c.Descriptions).Distinct();
A reminder that that will be the list of card descriptions at the time of binding however. If you want to keep it synchronised when _cards get updated then you'll have to do some more fancy footwork or look at a reactive binding source. (We use Bindable.Linq)