Grouping elements in LINQ .NET using GroupBy

The GroupBy operator has the same function as GROUP BY in SQL: group elements in a sequence by a common key. The GroupBy operator comes with 8 different signatures. Each returns a sequence consisting of objects that implement the IGrouping interface of type K – the key – and T – the type of the objects in the sequence. IGrouping implements IEnumerable of T. So when we iterate through the result the we can first look at the outer sequence of keys and then the inner sequence of each object with that key.

The simplest version of GroupBy accepts a Func delegate of T and K, which acts as the key selector. We’ll need an example sequence which has an ID. In the posts on LINQ we often take the following collections for the demos:

IEnumerable<Singer> singers = new List<Singer>() 
	{
		new Singer(){Id = 1, FirstName = "Freddie", LastName = "Mercury"} 
		, new Singer(){Id = 2, FirstName = "Elvis", LastName = "Presley"}
		, new Singer(){Id = 3, FirstName = "Chuck", LastName = "Berry"}
		, new Singer(){Id = 4, FirstName = "Ray", LastName = "Charles"}
		, new Singer(){Id = 5, FirstName = "David", LastName = "Bowie"}
	};
IEnumerable<Concert> concerts = new List<Concert>()
	{
		new Concert(){SingerId = 1, ConcertCount = 53, Year = 1979}
		, new Concert(){SingerId = 1, ConcertCount = 74, Year = 1980}
		, new Concert(){SingerId = 1, ConcertCount = 38, Year = 1981}
		, new Concert(){SingerId = 2, ConcertCount = 43, Year = 1970}
		, new Concert(){SingerId = 2, ConcertCount = 64, Year = 1968}
		, new Concert(){SingerId = 3, ConcertCount = 32, Year = 1960}
		, new Concert(){SingerId = 3, ConcertCount = 51, Year = 1961}
		, new Concert(){SingerId = 3, ConcertCount = 95, Year = 1962}
		, new Concert(){SingerId = 4, ConcertCount = 42, Year = 1950}
		, new Concert(){SingerId = 4, ConcertCount = 12, Year = 1951}
		, new Concert(){SingerId = 5, ConcertCount = 53, Year = 1983}
	};

The singers collection won’t actually be needed for the code example, it simply shows the purpose of the concerts collection. Here’s the grouping of the Concerts collection by singer ID:

IEnumerable<IGrouping<int, Concert>> concertGroups = concerts.GroupBy(c => c.SingerId);
foreach (IGrouping<int, Concert> concertGroup in concertGroups)
{
	Console.WriteLine("Concerts for singer of ID {0}:", concertGroup.Key);
	foreach (Concert concert in concertGroup)
	{
		Console.WriteLine("Number of concerts: {0}, in the year of {1}.", concert.ConcertCount, concert.Year);
	}
}

You can define the type of object that will be selected from the base sequence using another version of GroupBy which allows you to provide a key selector:

IEnumerable<IGrouping<int, int>> concertGroupsFiltered = concerts.GroupBy(c => c.SingerId, c => c.ConcertCount);
foreach (IGrouping<int, int> concertGroup in concertGroupsFiltered)
{
	Console.WriteLine("Concerts for singer of ID {0}:", concertGroup.Key);
	foreach (int concertCount in concertGroup)
	{
		Console.WriteLine("Number of concerts: {0}.", concertCount);
	}
}

View the list of posts on LINQ here.