How to use LINQ GroupBy method? (Two more use cases)
30 May 2022 #tutorial #csharpLast time, I showed five of the most common LINQ methods with pictures. Let’s take a deeper look at one of them. Let’s learn how to group the elements of a collection using GroupBy.
The GroupBy method groups the elements of a collection based on a grouping key. This method returns a collection of “groups” or “buckets” organized by that key.
Let’s continue to work with our catalog of movies and group our movies by rating.
// This is a Console app without the Main class declaration
// and with Global using statements
var movies = new List<Movie>
{
new Movie("Titanic", 1998, 4.5f),
new Movie("The Fifth Element", 1997, 4.6f),
new Movie("Terminator 2", 1991, 4.7f),
new Movie("Avatar", 2009, 5),
new Movie("Platoon", 1986, 4),
new Movie("My Neighbor Totoro", 1988, 5)
};
// Group our catalog of movies based on their rating
var groupedByRating = movies.GroupBy(movie => movie.Rating);
// ^^^^^^^
foreach (var group in groupedByRating)
{
// Each group or bucket has a Key property
Console.WriteLine($"Rating: {group.Key}");
foreach (var movie in group)
{
Console.WriteLine($"{movie.Name}");
}
Console.WriteLine();
}
// Output:
//Rating: 4.5
//Titanic
//
//Rating: 4.6
//The Fifth Element
//
//Rating: 4.7
//Terminator 2
//
//Rating: 5
//Avatar
//My Neighbor Totoro
//
//Rating: 4
//Platoon
record Movie(string Name, int ReleaseYear, float Rating);
Notice, we used three recent C# features: the Top-level statements, records, and global using statements. Now we can write Console applications without the Main declaration. All boilerplate code is gone!
The GroupBy method receives a delegate as a parameter with the property to use as a key when grouping elements. In our previous example, we used the Rating property and wrote movie => movie.Rating;
What does GroupBy return?
The result of GroupBy is a collection of groups or buckets. It returns IEnumerable<IGrouping<TKey, TSource>> where TKey is the type of the grouping key and TSource is the type of the elements inside the collection.
The IGrouping interface is a wrapper for a collection and its grouping key. Each group or bucket has a Key property.
In our example, the type of the return collection was IEnumerable<IGrouping<float, Movie>>. That’s why we needed two foreach loops to print the movies in each group. One to print the ratings and another to print all movies in each rating.
How to transform every group?
Also, the GroupBy method transforms each group or bucket.
Let’s count the movies with the same rating this time.
// This is a Console app without the Main class declaration
// and with Global using statements
var movies = new List<Movie>
{
new Movie("Titanic", 1998, 4.5f),
new Movie("The Fifth Element", 1997, 4.6f),
new Movie("Terminator 2", 1991, 4.7f),
new Movie("Avatar", 2009, 5),
new Movie("Platoon", 1986, 4),
new Movie("My Neighbor Totoro", 1988, 5)
};
// Transform every group into a RatingCount type
var countByRating = movies.GroupBy(movie => movie.Rating,
// vvvvvvv
(rating, groupedMovies) => new RatingCount(rating, groupedMovies.Count());
foreach (var group in countByRating)
{
Console.WriteLine($"{group.Rating}: [{group.Count}]");
}
// Output:
//4.5: [1]
//4.6: [1]
//4.7: [1]
//5: [2]
//4: [1]
record Movie(string Name, int ReleaseYear, float Rating);
record RatingCount(float Rating, int Count);
Notice we passed a second parameter to the GroupBy method. The first parameter was still the grouping key. But, the second one was a delegate that received the grouping key and the elements of each group,Func<TKey, IEnumerable<TSource>, TResult>. We named the two parameters: rating and groupedMovies.
Since we wanted to count the movies with the same rating, we used another LINQ method: Count.
As its name implies, the Count method returns the number of elements in a collection.
With the ratings and the movies per rating, we transformed every group of movies into a new object, RatingCount.
How to group by more than one property?
In the two previous examples, we used the Rating property as the grouping key. But we can group the elements of a collection by more than one grouping property.
With the GroupBy method, to group a collection by more than one property, use a custom object as the grouping key.
Let’s group our movies by release year and rating.
var movies = new List<Movie>
{
new Movie("Titanic", 1998, 4.5f),
new Movie("The Fifth Element", 1997, 4.6f),
new Movie("Terminator 2", 1991, 4.7f),
new Movie("Avatar", 2009, 5),
new Movie("Platoon", 1986, 4),
new Movie("My Neighbor Totoro", 1988, 5),
new Movie("Life Is Beautiful", 1997, 4.6f),
new Movie("Saving Private Ryan", 1998, 4.5f),
new Movie("Léon: The Professional", 1994, 4.5f),
new Movie("Forrest Gump", 1994, 4.5f)
};
// Group by our catalog of moves by release year and rating
var groupByReleasedYearAndRating = movies.GroupBy(movie => new { movie.ReleaseYear, movie.Rating });
// ^^^^^^^
foreach (var group in groupByReleasedYearAndRating)
{
var groupingKey = group.Key;
Console.WriteLine($"Release Year/Rating: {groupingKey.ReleaseYear} - {groupingKey.Rating} ");
foreach (var movie in group)
{
Console.WriteLine($"{movie.Name}");
}
Console.WriteLine();
}
// Output:
//Release Year/Rating: 1998 - 4.5
//Titanic
//Saving Private Ryan
//Release Year/Rating: 1997 - 4.6
//The Fifth Element
//Life Is Beautiful
//Release Year/Rating: 1991 - 4.7
//Terminator 2
//Release Year/Rating: 2009 - 5
//Avatar
//Release Year/Rating: 1986 - 4
//Platoon
//Release Year/Rating: 1988 - 5
//My Neighbor Totoro
//Release Year/Rating: 1994 - 4.5
//Léon: The Professional
//Forrest Gump
record Movie(string Name, int ReleaseYear, float Rating);
Notice we used an anonymous object as the grouping key.
What are anonymous objects in C#?
An anonymous object is a temporary and immutable object defined without a class definition or a name. To write anonymous objects, use the new keyword followed by the property initializations inside {}.
In our example, we wrote an anonymous object like this,
new { ReleaseYear = movie.ReleaseYear, Rating = movie.Rating }
Inside anonymous objects, we can omit names while defining member properties if we want to keep the same names. That is why we only wrote,
new { movie.ReleaseYear, movie.Rating }
When we need to access properties from an anonymous object, we use their property names, as usual.
Voilà! That’s the GroupBy method. It creates groups or buckets with the elements of a collection and transforms each group. If you noticed the output of our previous examples, the GroupBy method grouped the elements without sorting them. For that, we would need the OrderBy method.
To learn about LINQ and other methods, check my quick guide to LINQ, five common LINQ methods in pictures, and three set-like LINQ methods: Intersect, Union, and Except. For more C# content, check C# Definitively Guide and my top 10 best C# features.
Happy coding!