Question

I am trying to create a Dictionary<string, string> from the combined results of two string fields in an entity.

I am using this dictionary to populate a drop down list. For this particular case, both the key and value are the same.

Here is the query I have so far:

var qry = (
    from x in db.Treatment_Type
    select new { 
        TreatmentCode = x.Project_Classification + ":" + x.Improvement_Type
    })
    .AsEnumerable()
    .ToDictionary<string, string>(x => x);

I am trying to concatenate the Project_Classification and Improvement_Type values into one value. It is coming back as an anonymous type, instead of a string, so I get errors about how the dictionary can’t infer the types from the anonymous type and advising me to explicitly state the type. When I do that, I get errors that anonymous types can’t be converted to string.

How can I accomplish this?

Answer 1

Why don’t you just get rid of it being an anonymous type? That’s not helping you:

var qry = (from x in db.Treatment_Type
           select x.Project_Classification + ":" + x.Improvement_Type)
          .AsEnumerable()
          .ToDictionary<string, string>(x => x);

Only use anonymous types when you actually get some benefit from it 🙂

The same applies to query expressions – in this case I’d use:

var qry = db.Treatment_Type
            .Select(x => x.Project_Classification + ":" + x.Improvement_Type)
            .AsEnumerable()
            .ToDictionary<string, string>(x => x);