Question

How should I structure a Linq query to return a List or Ienumerable of the most popular Tags in my db (I am using EF4.1 by the way).

Currently I have:

  var tagsListing = db.Tags
                            .GroupBy(q => q.Name)
                                .OrderByDescending(gp => gp.Count())
                                .Take(5)
                                .Select();

I think I am part of the way there, but I am unsure of how to structure the Select statement…

Answer 1

Assuming you want the name and the count, just:

.Select(g => new { Name = g.Key, Count = g.Count() });

EDIT: If you want the complete tags as well, you could use:

.Select(g => new { Tags = g, Count = g.Count() })

which would give you a sequence of groups of tags, all with the same name within a group. Or you might only want the first tag within each group, e.g.

.Select(g => g.First())

It’s not clear what a Tag consists of, or what exactly you want in the results.