Passing data out

Question

I'm currently having a bit of a nightmare with a foreach loop. In a nutshell, what I am trying to do is split a string and then filter this data based on the string. I then need to bind the said data to a control of filter it further down the line. So far, I have the following code

 if (Session["Contract"] != null)
        {
            string[] contract = Session["Contract"].ToString().Split(',');
            foreach (string i in contract)
            {
                if (i.ToString() != "")
                {
                  data = data.Where(x => x.Term.Trim().ToUpper().Contains(i.ToString().Trim().ToUpper()));
                }
            }
        }

        LV_Jobs.DataSource = data;
        LV_Jobs.DataBind();

Now when looping through, the filtering works fine, but once you are finished with one item, the data variable is cleared? Obviously I need to pass "data" back out of the foreach loop. Can anyone point me in the direction of how to do this???

Answer 1

You are resetting data every time the loop iterates. Try this (depending on what data is)

        var filteredData = new List<string>();
        if (Session["Contract"] != null)
        {
            filteredData = Session["Contract"].ToString().Split(',').Join(
                                data, 
                               i => i.ToString().Trim().ToUpper(), 
                               x => x.Term.Trim().ToUpper(),
                               (i, x) => x);
        }

        LV_Jobs.DataSource = filteredData;
        LV_Jobs.DataBind();

Answer 2

Simply collect the needed data out in a list of results or any other data structure declared outside of the for/foreach scope.

Answer 3

Your data variable is not cleared. Instead, in the last iteration of the foreach where i.ToString() != "" your Where() condition is not true. So data becomes an empty list.

You can break out of the foreach when you found what you were looking for.