Question

Follow up question to this:

Linq Combine Left Join Data

Say I have the following db tables:

Users
-------
UserId (PK)
UserName

Roles
-----
RoleId (PK)
RoleName

UserRoles
---------
UserId (PK)
RoleId (PK)
Users 1-M UserRoles M-1 Roles

Using LinqToSQL, I can return the following set (thanks to response from prior question):

[User1], [Role1, Role2, Role3]
[User2], [Role2, Role3] 
[User3], [Role3]

The twist is I am trying to sort by Roles. How can I sort the result by Roles?

Clarification

I have a grid, when the user clicks on the Roles column, the rows would be sorted by that column.

So to start the grid would look like this:

[User1], [Role1, Role2, Role3]
[User2], [Role2, Role3] 
[User3], [Role3]

Then if they sort on Roles column it would look like this

[User3], [Role3]
[User2], [Role2, Role3] 
[User1], [Role1, Role2, Role3]

Answer 1

Just change the original answer very slightly:

from u in dataContext.Users
select new { User = u, Roles = u.UserRoles.Select(ur => ur.Role)
                                          .OrderBy(r => r.RoleName) };

(That’s assuming you want to sort each element of the result by the roles it contains. If that’s not correct, please explain what you want in more detail.)