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Each dictionary key maps to exactly one value. When you want multiple values per key, you can use a dictionary of lists. Here’s an example of creating a dictionary of lists, where each key maps to multiple ints: Notice that you can add to the dictionary like normal. The difference with a dictionary of lists … Read more
The simplest way to convert a dictionary to a list is by using the Linq ToList() method, like this: When used on a dictionary, ToList() returns a list of KeyValuePair objects. This example outputs the following: Dictionary keys to list If you want a list of the dictionary’s keys, use ToList() on Dictionary.Keys, like this: … Read more
Problem Dictionaries require keys to be unique. When you try to add a key/value to a dictionary and the key already exists, you get the following exception: System.ArgumentException: An item with the same key has already been added. This can happen when you use Dictionary.Add() or when you initialize a dictionary using the “curly brace” … Read more
You can use String.Join() to convert a collection of items to a string with a separator (such as a comma). Here’s an example of using String.Join() to convert a List of strings to a comma-separated string: This results in the following comma-separated string: String.Join() can be used on wide variety of input: I’ll show a … Read more
There are two good ways to convert a List<T> to a string: I’ll show examples of both approaches. Using String.Join() String.Join() is the simplest way to convert a List to a string. With this method, you pass in the List and a delimiter and it outputs a string. You can use any delimiter you want. … Read more
LinkedList<T> is a doubly linked list. It consists of nodes with values (i.e. integers, strings, etc…) and links to the next and previous node. LinkedList<T> has a reference to the head and tail nodes, which enables efficient insertion (and removal) from the start and end of the list. The main reason to use LinkedList<T> is … Read more
The simplest (and most efficient) way to remove duplicates from a list is by iterating, keeping track of items you’ve seen with a HashSet, and discarding items you’ve already seen. I’ll show four ways to implement this O(n) algorithm. At the end, I’ll explain a few inefficient approaches to avoid. Remove duplicates with ToHashSet() and … Read more
There are two ways to iterate through a List<T> and remove items based on a condition: These remove items from the list in an in-place manner (i.e. modify the original list) and avoid the problems you run into when doing this incorrectly (such as using a foreach or looping forward). I’ll show examples below. Then … Read more
Here are the different ways to remove items from a list: I’ll show examples of using these methods. Remove item by index with List.RemoveAt() You can use List.RemoveAt() to remove an item at an index (0-based). Here’s an example of removing the first and last item from the list: This removes the first item “A” … Read more
There are four ways to add items to a list: I’ll show examples of all of these methods for adding to a list. Append items with List.Add() You can use List.Add() to append an item to the end of the list. Here’s an example: This outputs the list’s contents: Initialize a list with items You … Read more
You can convert a list of strings to a list of integers by using int.Parse() on all of the strings. There are two simple ways to do this: I’ll show examples of these using these methods and then explain how to handle parsing exceptions. Option 1 – Use List.ConvertAll() Here’s an example of how to … Read more
The simplest way to convert an array to a list is with the ToList() Linq method: This outputs the following: Besides using ToList(), you can also use the list constructor or AddRange(). Before I show those, I’ll explain why you’d want to use these special methods instead of just adding items individually to a new … Read more
The simplest way to convert a list to an array is to use the List.ToArray() method: This outputs the following: Internally, the List<T> class stores elements in a dynamically sized array (it resizes when necessary). So under the hood, List.ToArray() uses Array.Copy() to copy the list’s internal array to a new array. This is very … Read more
When you need to sort a list, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can use one of these three built-in methods for sorting a list: In this article, I’ll show examples of using these three approaches for sorting a list. Sort a list with OrderBy() (Linq) The OrderBy() Linq method generates an IOrderedEnumerable … Read more
Here’s an example of how to initialize a list of named tuples: This creates a list of named value tuples (ValueTuple<string, int>) using list initializer syntax and then loops through the tuples. I suggest always using named value tuples (not System.Tuple). This outputs the following: I’ll now show how to add to the list of … Read more
You can update records with Dapper by using Execute() with an UPDATE statement and passing in the parameters. Here’s an example: Dapper maps the properties from the param object to the query parameters (ex: it maps year to @year). You can pass in the parameters with an anonymous type (as shown above) or by passing … Read more
You can insert records with Dapper by using Execute() on an INSERT statement and passing in a model object. Here’s an example of inserting a single movie record: Notice that you can simply pass in an object (param: movie) and Dapper handles the tedious parameter mapping for you. It tries to map properties from the … Read more
You can delete records with Dapper by using Execute() with a DELETE statement and specifying the record ID as a parameter. Here’s an example: This deletes a single record from the Movies table. Delete multiple records When you’re deleting multiple records, you can efficiently execute a single DELETE statement with a WHERE clause including all … Read more
There are three ways to update a file’s content: Which option you pick depends on the file’s format and size. For example, if you’re writing to an existing CSV file, you’d append new lines to the end of the file. If you’re updating a JSON file, you’d read all the JSON content, make changes, then … Read more
There are a few ways to create a file and write to it using the .NET File API (in System.IO). The simplest way is to use high-level methods like File.WriteAllText() and File.WriteAllLines(), specifying the file path and string(s) to write to the file. Here’s an example of using these (and their async equivalents): These high-level … Read more
There are two ways to receive CSV data in a web API: In this article, I’ll show examples of both of these approaches. I’ll be using the CsvHelper library to parse CSV data into model objects and then do model validation. Note: To use CsvHelper, install the CsvHelper package (Install-Package CsvHelper). Or use whichever parser … Read more
Let’s say you want to parse a comma-separated string into a list of integers. For example, you have “1,2,3” and you want to parse it into [1,2,3]. This is different from parsing CSV with rows of comma-separated values. This is more straightforward. You can use string.Split(“,”) to get the individual string values and then convert … Read more
You can use the Validator utility class to do manual attribute-based validation on any object, in any project type (as opposed to doing automatic model validation in ASP.NET). To do this, add model validation attributes to your class properties, then create an object and populate it (aka binding), and finally execute manual validation with the … Read more
There are two options for disabling ModelStateInvalidFilter: You’d do this when you want to manually perform model validation. I’ll show both options below. Disable ModelStateInvalidFilter globally To disable ModelStateInvalidFilter for *all* actions, set SuppressModelStateInvalidFilter=true in ConfigureApiBehaviorOptions, like this: Disable ModelStateInvalidFilter for specific actions To disable ModelStateInvalidFilter selectively, you can implement an IActionModelConvention attribute that removes … Read more
One error during JSON deserialization can cause the whole process to fail. Consider the following JSON. The second object has invalid data (can’t convert string to int), which will result in deserialization failing: With Newtonsoft, you can choose to ignore deserialization errors. To do that, pass in an error handling lambda in the settings: This … Read more