Question

I have a long line with an OrderBy inside. This line repeats itself several times with only a minor difference:

OrderBy(m => m.Name)
OrderBy(m => m.CreationTime)

etc.

In the interest of maintainability, is there a way to make only one line, and have it call some method, or perhaps use some Action that will take care of returning the correct field? The problem is that the fields are not of the same type.

Answer 1

Maybe this comes closer to what you want

public IComparable GetKey(int keyNum)
{
    switch (keyNum) {
        case 1:
            return Name;
        case 2:
            return CreationTime;
        default:
            return null;
    }
}

Sorting would occur like this

.OrderBy(m => m.GetKey(1))

---

Yet another way is to return a delegate

public static Func<MyClass, IComparable> GetKeySelector(int keyNum)
{
    switch (keyNum) {
        case 1:
            return m => m.Name;
        case 2:
            return m => m.CreationTime;
        default:
            throw new ArgumentException();
    }
}

.OrderBy(MyClass.GetKeySelector(1));