Can LINQ ToArray return a strongly-typed array in this example? - linq

Question

I've contrived this example because it's an easily digested version of the actual problem I'm trying to solve. Here are the classes and their relationships.
First we have a Country class that contains a Dictionary of State objects indexed by a string (their name or abbreviation for example). The contents of the State class are irrelevant:
class Country
{
Dictionary<string, State> states;
}
class State { ... }
We also have a Company class which contains a Dictionary of zero or more BranchOffice objects also indexed by state names or abbreviations.
class Company
{
Dictionary<string, BranchOffice> branches;
}
class BranchOffice { ... }
The instances we're working with are one Country object and an array of Company objects:
Country usa;
Company companies[];
What I want is an array of the State objects which contain a branch. The LINQ I wrote is below. First it grabs all the companies which actually contain a branch, then joins to the list of states by comparing the keys of both lists.
The problem is that ToArray returns an anonymous type. I understand why anonymous types can't be cast to strong types. I'm trying to figure out whether I could change something to get back a strongly typed array. (And I'm open to suggestions about better ways to write the LINQ overall.)
I've tried casting to BranchOffice all over the place (up front, at list2, at the final select, and other less-likely candidates).
BranchOffice[] offices =
(from cm in companies
where cm.branches.Count > 0
select new {
list2 =
(from br in cm.branches
join st in usa.states on br.Key equals st.Key
select st.Value
)
}
).ToArray();

Answer 1

You can do:
select new MyClassOfSomeType {
..
)
For selection, you can give it a custom class type. You can also then use ToList. With ArrayList, if you need to keep it loosely typed, you can then make it strongly typed later using Cast<>, though only for any select result that doesn't generate an anonymous class.
HTH.

Answer 2

If i understand the problem correctly, the you want just the states that have office brances in them, not the branches too. If so, one posible linq is the following:
State[] offices =
(from cm in companies
where cm.branches.Count > 0
from br in cm.branches
join st in usa.states on br.Key equals st.Key
select st.Value
).Distinct().ToArray();
If you want both the states and the branches, then you will have to do a group by, and the result will be an IEnumerable>, which you can process after.
var statesAndBranches =
from cm in companies
where cm.branches.Count > 0
from br in cm.branches
join st in usa.states on br.Key equals st.Key
group br.Value by st.Value into g
select g;
Just one more thing, even though you have countries and branches declared as dictionaries, they are used as IEnumerable (from keyValuePair in dictionary) so you will not get any perf benefit form them.