Question

I came across this problem at work, and though I have a solution, I can’t help feeling there is a more elegant way. The use of List.IndexOf() stands out as a bit hacky to me.

I have to sort a collection of BreakdownItems by credit rating. Credit ratings don’t follow alphabetical order so I’ve treated them as just having some arbitrary, non logical order.

IEnumerable<BreakdownItem> unsortedCreditRatings = new List<BreakdownItem>
        {
            new BreakdownItem{ Name = "CCC", Weight=20d},
            new BreakdownItem{ Name = "AA", Weight=20d},
            new BreakdownItem{ Name = "AAA", Weight=10d},
            new BreakdownItem{ Name = "B", Weight=50d},
        };

        var sortOrder = new List<string> 
    { "AAA", "AA", "A", "BBB", "BB", "B", "CCC", "below CCC" };

        var sortedRatingBreakdown = unsortedCreditRatings
           .OrderBy(item => sortOrder.IndexOf(item.Name));

Answer 1

Can you make the credit rating an enum instead of a string? You could then assign those enum values the correct sort order.