Advanced LINQ Techniques for C# Developers

One of the most powerful features of C#, LINQ — Language Integrated Query provides powerful methods like Where,Select, OrderBy to query collections and databases.

In this article, we’ll explore some advanced LINQ concepts and patterns that every C# developer should know and master.

Using GroupBy Effectively

The GroupBy() is a powerful operator in LINQ to group data by arranging results into custom types. This makes the operations more readable.

Here we have arranged peoples by their age and then displays each group into a custom object grouped.

This custom object grouped` contains the age and list of names.

This approach allows us to organize and display data in a easy-to-read format.

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Custom Aggregation

You can achieve custom aggregation using Sum, Count, and Average. But there is something called as Aggregate that allows you to define custom accumulation logic.

Output

Combine Sequences Using ‘Zip’

Have you ever wanted to combine two sequences by combining their elements pairwise? This Zip()` is to the rescue!

Output

This is very useful for operations when you want to pair data from two collections.

Querying Hierarchical Data with ‘SelectMany'

If you want to flatten nested collections, you can use SelectMany()` feature of LINQ. It’s especially useful when working with hierarchical structures. Moreover, it is useful in tree-like data structures too!

Output

The SelectMany example flattens a hierarchical structure by extracting employees from departments and pairing each employee with their department.

Deferred Execution

LINQ are not executed until the query is iterated over. This is called Deferred Execution.

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Optimizing Performance with Parallel LINQ (PLINQ)

When you are working with large datasets, PLINQ comes to the rescue improving the performance of your code by parallelizing queries.

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This example mimics a large dataset and uses PLINQ to find prime numbers by parallelizing the IsPrime().

Creating Custom LINQ Operators

You can use extension methods to extend LINQ by writing custom operators. Here we will create TakeEvery()` custom LINQ operator.

Output

Here, the custom LINQ operator TakeEvery()` selects every nth element from a collection using an extension method making it easy to filter the sequences.

Ending Note

Handling data can be easily mastered by using advanced LINQ techniques the right way. This would not only make your code more optimized, but concise and expressive too.

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