Using Orderby on BatchedJoinBlock(Of T1, T2) - Dataflow (Task Parallel Library)

Question

I'm just looking to be able to sort the results of a BatchedJoinBlock (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh194683.aspx) so that the different results of the different targets stay together. I will explain! Example in some pseudo-code:

Dim batchedJoin = New BatchedJoinBlock(Of String, object)(4)
    batchedJoin.Target1.Post("String1Target1")
    batchedJoin.Target2.Post(CType(BuildIt, StringBuilder1))
    batchedJoin.Target1.Post("String1Target2")
    batchedJoin.Target2.Post(CType(BuildIt, StringBuilder2))
Dim results = batchedJoin.Receive()
'This sorts one result...
Dim SortByResult = results.Item1.OrderBy(Function(item) item.ToString, New NaturalStringComparer)

Basically I've got a string and an object, the SortByResult variable above sorts the strings exactly as I'd like them to sort. I'm looking for a way to get the objects that used to be at the same index number in target2 into the same order. e.g. if "String1Target1" changes order I'd like to somehow reliably refer to/pair it together with "StringBuilder1". The actual end result just needs to be that the objects (target2) are sorted in the order that is dictated by the strings being sorted (target1). Something like:

   Dim EndResult = results.Item2.OrderBy(strings in target1)

but I'll gladly take an intermediate solution! I've also tried using a dictionary (results.Item2.ToDictionary) with the string as a key (which would also be a fine solution) but it's a bit beyond my ken using lamba expressions in the proper context. I can realistically do this in several steps with a list or something, but I'm trying to get something more efficient/learn something, and it seems like there's a lot of default options with the results of the jointblock that I'm just not experienced enough to use. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

Answer 1

To me, it looks like you don't actually want BatchedJoinBlock, because the two pieces of data always come together. A better option for that would be a BatchBlock of Tuple<string, object>. When you have that, you can then use LINQ directly to sort each batch:

results.OrderBy(Function(tuple) tuple.Item1)