I am trying to order a List of Entities that contains another list of Entities. I have implemented IComparable for all entities and still get the exception. All of the examples I have seen address the issue where you have one list and you order by a given field in that list but not where you have a list of lists. This issue is happening for Linq to Objects per below and also for Linq to Entities. What am I missing?
[TestClass]
public class OrderBy
{
[TestMethod]
public void OrderByTest()
{
var hobbies = new Collection<Hobby> { new Hobby { HobbyId = 1, Name = "Eating" }, new Hobby() { HobbyId = 2, Name = "Breathing" } };
var p1 = new Person
{
PersonId = 1,
Name = "A",
PersonHobbies = new Collection<PersonHobby> { new PersonHobby() { PersonHobbyId = 1}}
};
var p2 = new Person
{
PersonId = 2,
Name = "Z",
PersonHobbies = new Collection<PersonHobby> { new PersonHobby() { PersonHobbyId = 2 }}
};
var people = new List<Person> { p1, p2 };
var pplEnumerable = people.AsEnumerable();
pplEnumerable = pplEnumerable.OrderByDescending(r => r.PersonHobbies.OrderByDescending(p => p.Hobby.Name));
foreach (var person in pplEnumerable)
{
Console.WriteLine(person.Name);
}
}
public class Person : IComparable
{
public int PersonId { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<PersonHobby> PersonHobbies { get; set; }
public int CompareTo(object obj)
{
if (obj == null) return 1;
var otherPerson = obj as Person;
return PersonId.CompareTo(otherPerson.PersonId);
}
}
public class PersonHobby : IComparable
{
public int PersonHobbyId { get; set; }
public int HobbyId { get; set; }
public virtual Person Person{ get; set; }
public int PersonId { get; set; }
public virtual Hobby Hobby { get; set; }
public int CompareTo(object obj)
{
if (obj == null) return 1;
var otherPersonHobby = obj as PersonHobby;
return PersonHobbyId.CompareTo(otherPersonHobby.PersonHobbyId);
}
}
public class Hobby : IComparable
{
public int HobbyId { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public int CompareTo(object obj)
{
if (obj == null) return 1;
var otherHobby = obj as Hobby;
return HobbyId.CompareTo(otherHobby.HobbyId);
}
}
}
You cannot apply ordering to lists by default. You need to write up a custom class (sort of EquatableList etc.) or use LINQ Except & Intersect operators to compare lists.
But based on your comment, if you're looking for the LINQ equivalent of:
select * from Person p join PersonHobby ph
on ph.PersonId = p.PersonId join Hobby h
on h.HobbyId = ph.HobbyId order by h.Name
then that can be achieved as:
var query = people.SelectMany(p => p.PersonHobbies)
.Join(hobbies, ph => ph.HobbyId, h => h.HobbyId,
(ph, h) => new
{
Person = ph.Person, PersonHobby = ph, Hobby = h
})
.OrderBy(r => r.Hobby.Name);
basically we join person, person hobbies and hobby on the keys, and project all columns and sort it by the hobby.name field, as mentioned in your SQL.