Predicates and OrderBy , Func

Question

I understand that predicates are delegate to function which return bool and take generic parameter, I understand that when I say:

mycustomer => mycustomer.fullname == 1

It actually means:

delegate (Customer mycustomer)
{
  return mycustomer.fullName == "John";
}

The paramter I'm passing in when I pass this lambda expression is:

public delegate bool Criteria<T>(T value) which is natively called Predicate

But what I don't understand is what it means when I say mycustomer=>mycustomer.fullname

In customers.OrderBy(mycustomer=>mycustomer.fullname);

How do I implement something like OrderBy? How do I tell a method which property to do action on ! like the previous example?

By example here is a case I want to make a method which get all values of a collection for a specific property :

list<string> mylist = customers.GetPropertyValues(cus=>cus.Fullname);

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The Func<TElement,TKey> is used to create an IComparer<TKey> which is used internally in an OrderedEnumerable to sort the items. When you do:

var items = myList.OrderBy(i => i.SomeProperty);

The OrderedEnumerable type is creating an IComparer<TKey> internally. In the above example, if i.SomeProperty were a String it would create an instance of IComparer<String> and then sort the items in the source enumerable using that comprarer on the SomeProperty member.

In your last case:

list<string> mylist = customers.GetPropertyValues(cus=>cus.Fullname);

You do this using Select:

var names = customers.Select(c => c.Fullname);

Which will return an enumerable of String names. In the Select method, the Func<TSource, TResult> is used to select the target element to be added to the result.

To replicate this yourself, you could do:

public static IEnumerable<TMember> GetPropertyValues<TSource, TMember>
  (this IEnumerable<TSource> enumerable, Func<TSource, TMember> selector)
{
  if (enumerable == null)
    throw new ArgumentNullException("enumerable");

  foreach (TSource item in enumerable)
  {
    yield return selector(item);
  }
}

Answer 2

You can create something like this:

static class ExtenstinonClass
{
    static IEnumerable<V> GetPropertyValues<T, V>(this IList<T> collection, Func<T, V> func)
    {
        foreach(var item in collection)
        {
            yield retun func(item);
        }
    }
}

But I really don't understand why Select method doesn't suite you.

Answer 3

The OrderBy Extension Method on class Enumerable takes a method of type Func as argument. Here is the documentation.

Here is another good article that you can use.

Answer 4

but what i dont understand is what it means when i say mycustomer=>mycustomer.fullname

It's the same thing as your delegate example except it only returns the fullName. Passed as a lambda so that it can be lazy evaluated.

If you want to create a method that works like OrderBy, besides that your GetPropertyValues seems to be the same as customers.Select(c => c.Fullname), then you'll have to dive into the sea of generics and extension methods. OrderBy is actually just an extension method on IEnumerable defined as

public static IOrderedEnumerable<TSource> OrderBy<TSource, TKey>(
    this IEnumerable<TSource> source,
    Func<TSource, TKey> keySelector
)

It looks like the answer from @Mike is an example of that and also a reimplementation of LINQ Select.