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

The best way to do this that will be compatible with other .NET versions is to override Equals and GetHash to handle this (see Stack Overflow question This code returns distinct values. However, what I want is to return a strongly typed collection as opposed to an anonymous type), but if you need something that is generic throughout your code, the solutions in this article are great.

Answer 2

I've written an article that explains how to extend the Distinct function so that you can do as follows:

var people = new List<Person>();

people.Add(new Person(1, "a", "b"));
people.Add(new Person(2, "c", "d"));
people.Add(new Person(1, "a", "b"));

foreach (var person in people.Distinct(p => p.ID))
    // Do stuff with unique list here.

Here's the article: Extending LINQ - Specifying a Property in the Distinct Function

Answer 3

Override Equals(object obj) and GetHashCode() methods:

class Person
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public int Name { get; set; }

    public override bool Equals(object obj)
    {
        return ((Person)obj).Id == Id;
        // or: 
        // var o = (Person)obj;
        // return o.Id == Id && o.Name == Name;
    }
    public override int GetHashCode()
    {
        return Id.GetHashCode();
    }
}

and then just call:

List<Person> distinctList = new[] { person1, person2, person3 }.Distinct().ToList();

Answer 4

When we faced such a task in our project we defined a small API to compose comparators.

So, the use case was like this:

var wordComparer = KeyEqualityComparer.Null<Word>().
    ThenBy(item => item.Text).
    ThenBy(item => item.LangID);
...
source.Select(...).Distinct(wordComparer);

And API itself looks like this:

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;

public static class KeyEqualityComparer
{
    public static IEqualityComparer<T> Null<T>()
    {
        return null;
    }

    public static IEqualityComparer<T> EqualityComparerBy<T, K>(
        this IEnumerable<T> source,
        Func<T, K> keyFunc)
    {
        return new KeyEqualityComparer<T, K>(keyFunc);
    }

    public static KeyEqualityComparer<T, K> ThenBy<T, K>(
        this IEqualityComparer<T> equalityComparer,
        Func<T, K> keyFunc)
    {
        return new KeyEqualityComparer<T, K>(keyFunc, equalityComparer);
    }
}

public struct KeyEqualityComparer<T, K>: IEqualityComparer<T>
{
    public KeyEqualityComparer(
        Func<T, K> keyFunc,
        IEqualityComparer<T> equalityComparer = null)
    {
        KeyFunc = keyFunc;
        EqualityComparer = equalityComparer;
    }

    public bool Equals(T x, T y)
    {
        return ((EqualityComparer == null) || EqualityComparer.Equals(x, y)) &&
                EqualityComparer<K>.Default.Equals(KeyFunc(x), KeyFunc(y));
    }

    public int GetHashCode(T obj)
    {
        var hash = EqualityComparer<K>.Default.GetHashCode(KeyFunc(obj));

        if (EqualityComparer != null)
        {
            var hash2 = EqualityComparer.GetHashCode(obj);

            hash ^= (hash2 << 5) + hash2;
        }

        return hash;
    }

    public readonly Func<T, K> KeyFunc;
    public readonly IEqualityComparer<T> EqualityComparer;
}

More details is on our site: IEqualityComparer in LINQ.

Answer 5

In case you need a Distinct method on multiple properties, you can check out my PowerfulExtensions library. Currently it's in a very young stage, but already you can use methods like Distinct, Union, Intersect, Except on any number of properties;

This is how you use it:

using PowerfulExtensions.Linq;
...
var distinct = myArray.Distinct(x => x.A, x => x.B);

Answer 6

Please give a try with below code.

var Item = GetAll().GroupBy(x => x .Id).ToList();