Question

I have a class Foo as follows.

public class Foo
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Value { get; set; }   
}

I have a collection of this class let’s say List and sometimes I have data as follows in collection.

 Name           Value   
Jimmy           hello   
Jimmy           World   
Peter           how  
Peter           are you?   
Suzanne         I am fine

I want to combine the value field for same Names as folows

Name            Value  
Jimmy           hello World  
Peter           how are you?  
Suzanne         I am fine  

Is there anyway this could be accomplished using Linq?

Answer 1

You can use the Linq GroupBy as follows:

fooCollection.GroupBy(foo => foo.Name)

    // create a new "Foo" object based on each grouping
    .Select(g => new Foo() { 

        // "Name" becomes the group key (ie, "Jimmy", "Peter", etc)
        Name = g.Key, 

        // "Value" becomes the Value for all Foo in this group, concatenated
        Value = string.Join(" ", g.Select(item => item.Value).ToArray()) 
    })
    .ToArray();