I was recently going through the forums and found some developers struggling with queries involving Classes with One-To-Many Relationship. In this article, I will demonstrate how to query a Hierarchical Parent-Child Structure using LINQ.
Note: You may also want to read some more LINQ Tutorials written by me to get familiar with LINQ
To print the results, I am using a utility class called ObjectDumper which can be obtained from here. The structure of the classes representing a Parent-Child relationship is shown below. Each Department has many Employees, but one Employee belongs to only one Department
C#
public class Department
{
public int DeptID { get; set; }
public string DeptName { get; set; }
public List<Employee> employee { get; set; }
}
public class Employee
{
public int EmpID { get; set; }
public int DeptID { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public int AgeInYrs { get; set; }
}
VB.NET (10.0)
Public Class Department
Public Property DeptID() As Integer
Public Property DeptName() As String
Public Property employee() As List(Of Employee)
End Class
Public Class Employee
Public Property EmpID() As Integer
Public Property DeptID() As Integer
Public Property Name() As String
Public Property AgeInYrs() As Integer
End Class
Sample Data
List<Department> lists = new List<Department>()
{
new Department()
{
DeptID = 1, DeptName = "Marketing", employee = new List<Employee>
{
new Employee() { EmpID = 9, DeptID = 1, Name = "Jack Nolas", AgeInYrs = 28 },
new Employee() { EmpID = 5, DeptID = 1, Name = "Mark Pine" , AgeInYrs = 42 },
new Employee() { EmpID = 3, DeptID = 1, Name = "Sandra Simte" , AgeInYrs = 38 },
new Employee() { EmpID = 8, DeptID = 1, Name = "Larry Lo" , AgeInYrs = 31 }
}
},
new Department()
{
DeptID = 2, DeptName = "Sales", employee = new List<Employee>
{
new Employee() { EmpID = 1, DeptID = 2, Name = "Sudhir Panj" , AgeInYrs = 28 },
new Employee() { EmpID = 7, DeptID = 2, Name = "Kathy Karlo" , AgeInYrs = 43 },
new Employee() { EmpID = 4, DeptID = 2, Name = "Dinesh Kumar" , AgeInYrs = 34 }
}
},
new Department()
{
DeptID = 3, DeptName = "HR", employee = new List<Employee>
{
new Employee() { EmpID = 2, DeptID = 3, Name = "Kaff Joe" , AgeInYrs = 25 },
new Employee() { EmpID = 6, DeptID = 3, Name = "Su Lie" , AgeInYrs = 52 },
new Employee() { EmpID = 10, DeptID = 3, Name = "Malcolm Birt" , AgeInYrs = 41 }
}
}
};
Here are some common Operations on a Hierarchical Parent-Child List. Please use this Converter Tool to convert the code to VB.NET
1. List Employees in Each Department
var empInDept = lists
.Select(emp => new
{
Department = emp.DeptName,
Employee = emp.employee.Select(e => e.Name)
});
ObjectDumper.Write(empInDept, 1);
2. Print the Average Age of Employees in each Department
var avgAgePerDept = lists
.Select(emp => new
{
Department = emp.DeptName,
AverageAge = emp.employee.Average(avg => (double)avg.AgeInYrs)
});
ObjectDumper.Write(avgAgePerDept, 1);
3. List only those Employees in each Department with Age > 30
var empGt30 = lists
.Select(emp => new
{
Department = emp.DeptName,
Emp = emp.employee.Where(em => em.AgeInYrs > 30)
.Select(e => new
{
EmployeeName = e.Name,
Age = e.AgeInYrs
})
});
ObjectDumper.Write(empGt30, 1);
4. Count the number of Employees in each Department
var cntEmpPerDept = lists
.Select(emp => new
{
Department = emp.DeptName,
NoOfEmployees = emp.employee.Count()
});
ObjectDumper.Write(cntEmpPerDept, 1);
5. Sort and List Employees in each Department
var ordered = lists
.Select(emp => new
{
Department = emp.DeptName,
Employee = emp.employee.OrderBy(e => e.Name)
.Select(c => new
{
Name = c.Name
})
});
ObjectDumper.Write(ordered, 1);
The entire source code of this article can be downloaded over here. I hope you liked the article and I thank you for viewing it.
This article has been editorially reviewed by Suprotim Agarwal.
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