LINQ's Distinct() on a particular property

Question

I am playing with LINQ to learn about it, but I can't figure out how to use Distinct when I do not have a simple list (a simple list of integers is pretty easy to do, this is not the question). What I if want to use Distinct on a list of an Object on one or more properties of the object?

Example: If an object is Person, with Property Id. How can I get all Person and use Distinct on them with the property Id of the object?

Person1: Id=1, Name="Test1"
Person2: Id=1, Name="Test1"
Person3: Id=2, Name="Test2"

How can I get just Person1 and Person3? Is that possible?

If it's not possible with LINQ, what would be the best way to have a list of Person depending on some of its properties in .NET 3.5?

Answer 1

EDIT: This is now part of MoreLINQ.

What you need is a "distinct-by" effectively. I don't believe it's part of LINQ as it stands, although it's fairly easy to write:

public static IEnumerable<TSource> DistinctBy<TSource, TKey>
    (this IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TSource, TKey> keySelector)
{
    HashSet<TKey> seenKeys = new HashSet<TKey>();
    foreach (TSource element in source)
    {
        if (seenKeys.Add(keySelector(element)))
        {
            yield return element;
        }
    }
}

So to find the distinct values using just the Id property, you could use:

var query = people.DistinctBy(p => p.Id);

And to use multiple properties, you can use anonymous types, which implement equality appropriately:

var query = people.DistinctBy(p => new { p.Id, p.Name });

Untested, but it should work (and it now at least compiles).

It assumes the default comparer for the keys though - if you want to pass in an equality comparer, just pass it on to the HashSet constructor.

Answer 2

You should be able to override Equals on person to actually do Equals on Person.id. This ought to result in the behavior you're after.

Answer 3

You can do this with the standard Linq.ToLookup(). This will create a collection of values for each unique key. Just select the first item in the collection

Persons.ToLookup(p => p.Id).Select(coll => coll.First());

Answer 4

Solution first group by your fields then select firstordefault item.

    List<Person> distinctPeople = allPeople
   .GroupBy(p => p.PersonId)
   .Select(g => g.FirstOrDefault())
   .ToList();

Answer 5

I think it is enough:

list.Select(s => s.MyField).Distinct();

Answer 6

The following code is functionally equivalent to Jon Skeet's answer.

Tested on .NET 4.5, should work on any earlier version of LINQ.

public static IEnumerable<TSource> DistinctBy<TSource, TKey>(
  this IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TSource, TKey> keySelector)
{
  HashSet<TKey> seenKeys = new HashSet<TKey>();
  return source.Where(element => seenKeys.Add(keySelector(element)));
}

Incidentially, check out Jon Skeet's latest version of DistinctBy.cs on Google Code.