Tag: Extension Methods

Using the ForEach method on List Collections


public static StateCollection GetByName(String partialName)
{
 StateCollection returnValue;

 returnValue = new StateCollection();

  //baseList is some list I wasn't nice enough to show where it came from.
  //It's just a list of states.  Get over it.
 var stateList = from state in baseList
                 where state.Name.StartsWith(partialName)
                 select new State(state.Name, state.Code);

 stateList.ToList().ForEach(currentState => returnValue.Add(currentState));

 return returnValue;
}

So what is done here:

Basically I am using a linq expression to get states from a list of states (Like Michigan, Illinois, or Canada) based on name. No big deal. Then I take the query and produce a List from it. AMAZIN!


stateList.ToList().ForEach(curretState => returnValue.Add(curretState));

ForEach is an extension method for List<>. Now if you remember from previous posts, that means it resides in a static class somewhere that “tacks” it on to the List<> class. Basically this method acts like a typical foreach loop. (You know, go through the list and do something. Or nothing. I suppose you could just loop through if you wanted to. I won’t tell you how to live your life.) Simple but in my opinion, much cleaner looking.

I mean I could do this:


public static StateCollection GetByName(String partialName)
{
 StateCollection returnValue;

 returnValue = new StateCollection();

 foreach(State currentState in baseList)
 {
   if(currentState.Name.StartsWith(partialName)
   {
     returnValue.Add(currentState);
   }
 }

 return returnValue;
}

Really it’s just up to what you prefer. (And I’m sure you could drive a car with no power brakes. You’ll still get there.) Also, I really didn’t need the linq expression since I could have done this all with ForEach (Provided baseList is IEnumerable).

One last note, all IEnumerable collections have the ToList() method (And a bunch of other ones for that matter.)

IEnumerable Extention Methods and Action

This may be slightly off, but I’ve pretty much figured them out and how they work with lambda expressions.

First off, Lambda expressions. These are the odd looking currentItem => expressions you might see in my examples. They are a little misleading, at least to me they were. When I saw:


 ilist.SomeExtension(currentItem => SomeMethod(currentItem));

I thought that meant:

Loop through the list of currentItems and use that method. Well that’s sort of it, but really misleading. In order to fully understand some of the more fun extension methods and lamba fun, a clearer explanation is needed. (I say fun instead of more complicated since I think the word “complicated” is exaggerating .)

What


 ilist.SomeExtension(currentItem => SomeMethod(currentItem));

really means is that I am going to call this method SomeExtension, give it a method to use, and that’s it. What it does with that method is the heart of what SomeExtension is.

Small note: currentItem => helps to infer the type of whatever it is that you’re going to pass into SomeMethod.

Say SomeExtension looks like this:


public static void SomeExtension(this IList<I> items, <I>, Action<I> action)
{
   SomeExtension(I item in items)
  {
    action(item);
  }
}

Now what is action? It’s basically a place holder for a method that returns nothing. Only thing it cares about is what it has to send in, and that is Type I. From there, it will call the method it points to and magic happens.
Small note: What the hell is items? Well that is the list that you called this method from. This is an example of an extension method. Extension methods, in short, allow a person to “tack” a method onto a class without changing the class itself. this IList<I> items tells me that the extension method SomeExtension will be “tacked” onto ANY IList.

In this instance, what action really looks like is this:


public void action
(
  delegate (I Item)
  {
    SomeMethod(item);
  }
)

As you can see, the SomeMethod from the original SomeExtension call comes into play now. The above examples really could be the List<> extention method of ForEach most likely looks like.

Now what might not look familiar there is the delegate key word. This is what’s called an anonymous method. Basically, this allows you to create delegates on the fly. An example of this would be List<>.Contains. A normal call to this might be:


someList.Contains(delegate(String currentItem){ return currentItem == someVariable); });

What this says is that contains will do whatever it does, but it will use the method you have provided to do that. Most likely the method itself looks like (And this is pseudo code for sure):


Boolean contains;

contains = false;

foreach(String currentItem in theList)
{
  contains = delegate(currentItem);

  if(contains)
  {
     exit;
  }
}

return contains;

Although, this is misleading in this post since this would deal with Func not Action.