Querying Selected Items From ListItemCollection Using LINQ

Working with ListItemCollection is general practices and getting single value for that it's like child's play. What if you need the list of items which are selected?

I am sure you probably use foreach loop something like

List<ListItem> selectedList = new List<ListItem>();
foreach(ListItem li in cbList.Items)
{
    if (li.Selected)
        selectedList.Add(li);
}

Or advance user use the functionality of C#2.0 using yield keyword

private IEnumerable<ListItem> GetSelectedItems(ListControl listControl)
{
    foreach (ListItem itm in listControl.Items)
    {
        if (itm.Selected)
            yield return itm;
    } 
}
.
.
.
.
.
.
{
    IEnumerable<ListItem> selectedList = new List<ListItem>();
    selectedList = GetSelectedItems(cbList);
}

And now using LINQ C#3.0

var selectedItems =
    from li in cbList.Items.Cast<ListItem>()
    where li.Selected == true
    select li;

The only difference is the Cast, we need to make ListItemCollection generic so we can use it in LINQ query.

And now lets see using Lambda Expression C#3.0

List<ListItem> selectedItems =
    cbList.Items.Cast<ListItem>()
    .Where(item => item.Selected == true).ToList();

Here also we did cast to get the extension method Where. And in Where condition we write the lambda expression instead of anonymous delegate function.

We can even write extension method on base class ListControl so we can have selected items for all the list control. Lets write one extension method on ListControl

public static List<ListItem> SelectedItems(this ListControl lc)
{
    List<ListItem> selectedItems =
                lc.Items.Cast<ListItem>()
                .Where(item => item.Selected == true).ToList();
    return selectedItems;
}

And get the selected items using our extension method we will just call the SelectedItems method.

CheckBoxList cbList = new CheckBoxList();
cbList.SelectedItems();

How to sort Hashtable

I was having one requirement for sorting Hashtable. In general you cannot choose the sort order of the items added to the Hashtable. To sort Hashtable best practice is to use SortedList. You can either replace Hashtable with SortedList or you convert Hashtable into SortedList and provided your sort expression. Let's see with example. I have one class name ContactActivity which has contact and activity associated with it. I override ToString method to see the the value of added object.

class ContactActivity
{
    public long ActivityId { get; set; }
    public long ContactId { get; set; }

    public override string ToString()
    {
        return string.Format("Contact Id : {0} => Activity Id : {1}", ContactId, ActivityId);
    }
}

Now we will going to create Hashtable and add few objects of type ContactActivity

Hashtable hs = new Hashtable();

hs.Add("3", new ContactActivity() { ContactId = 3, ActivityId = 1 });
hs.Add("4", new ContactActivity() { ContactId = 4, ActivityId = 4 });
hs.Add("6", new ContactActivity() { ContactId = 6, ActivityId = 5 });
hs.Add("1", new ContactActivity() { ContactId = 1, ActivityId = 1 });

One of the constructor of SortedList; except IDictionary and IComparer; Which initializes a new instance of the SortedList class that contains elements copied from the specified dictionary, has the same initial capacity as the number of elements copied, and is sorted according to the specified IComparer interface. We will use that constructor to build SortedList from Hashtable, and also will provide the logic of sorting key by implementing IComparer interface.

Here is the class which implements IComparer interface

public class MySort : IComparer
{
    bool IsAscendingOrder = true;
    #region IComparer Members

    public int Compare(object x, object y)
    {
        if (IsAscendingOrder)
            return (int.Parse(x.ToString()) - int.Parse(y.ToString()));
        else
            return (int.Parse(y.ToString()) - int.Parse(x.ToString()));
    }
    public MySort(bool blnIsAscendingOrder)
    {
        IsAscendingOrder = blnIsAscendingOrder;
    }

    #endregion
}

I added one variable to set the order of key also added constructor which used to set sort order. As in my case key will be integer so I use int.Parse else you can use simply string comparison. Lets create one common method to prints the Hashtable or SortedList, as both implements IDictionary interface we can use that to create common method.

private static void Show(IDictionary id)
{
    foreach (string strKey in id.Keys)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(id[strKey].ToString());
    }
}

So lets put all together.

Hashtable hs = new Hashtable();

hs.Add("3", new ContactActivity() { ContactId = 3, ActivityId = 1 });
hs.Add("4", new ContactActivity() { ContactId = 4, ActivityId = 4 });
hs.Add("6", new ContactActivity() { ContactId = 6, ActivityId = 5 });
hs.Add("1", new ContactActivity() { ContactId = 1, ActivityId = 1 });

Console.WriteLine("Hashtable values");
Show(hs);
Console.WriteLine("Ascending Order");
SortedList sl = new SortedList(hs, new MySort(true));
Show(sl);
Console.WriteLine("Descending Order");
Show(sl);
sl = new SortedList(hs, new MySort(false));

Let's see the output.