Question

I have a dictionary of projects and if I select a project then I will give an option previous and next. I have added a code example but I hope there is a better / faster way to do this e.g. for 500 projects.

Is there maybe a LINQ option or something?

I have checked Enumerator but it only has a moveNext method and can’t set the current.

Quick example:

projects is a Dictionary.

project is a KeyValuePair that exists in the Dictionary.

var match = false;
var save = new KeyValuePair<ExtendedProjectLightPlan, Page>();
var before = new KeyValuePair<ExtendedProjectLightPlan, Page>();
var after = new KeyValuePair<ExtendedProjectLightPlan, Page>();
foreach (var p in projects)
{
    before = save;
    save = p;

    if (match)
    {
        after = p;
        break;
    }

    if (p.Key.Id == project.Key.Id)
    {
        match = true;
    }                
}

Answer 1

There’s nothing built into LINQ to do this, but you could write your own fairly easily… here’s an implementation which uses Tuple from .NET 4. It will return n-2 items for a sequence which originally has n items – but you could adjust that if necessary.

public IEnumerable<Tuple<T, T, T>> WithNextAndPrevious<T>
    (this IEnumerable<T> source)
{
    // Actually yield "the previous two" as well as the current one - this
    // is easier to implement than "previous and next" but they're equivalent
    using (IEnumerator<T> iterator = source.GetEnumerator())
    {
        if (!iterator.MoveNext())
        {
            yield break;
        }
        T lastButOne = iterator.Current;
        if (!iterator.MoveNext())
        {
            yield break;
        }
        T previous = iterator.Current;
        while (iterator.MoveNext())
        {
            T current = iterator.Current;
            yield return Tuple.Create(lastButOne, previous, current);
            lastButOne = previous;
            previous = current;
        }
    }        
}

Note that as per LukeH’s answer, dictionaries are unordered… but hopefully the above will help you anyway.