Question

I have a string array in C# like so:

string[] sites = new string[] {
    "http://foobar.com",
    "http://asdaff.com",
    "http://etc.com"
};

I’m using this array in a foreach and I would like to be able to add a “type” value of 1, 2, or 3, depending on which site I am currently iterating through. I am concatenating data with the StringBuilder from these sites. Now, I could store the site as a varchar, but it would be really neat, since this array will NEVER change to associate a number with the string and build it that way.

Answer 1

You can use a dictionary for this – Dictionary<int, string> (or Dictionary<string, int>).

var sitesWithId = new Dictionary<string, int>
{
  new { "http://foobar.com", 1},
  new { "http://asdaff.com", 2},
  new { "http://etc.com", 3}
}

Another option is to just use a List<string> and IndexOf to find out the index.

var sites = new List<string> {
    "http://foobar.com",
    "http://asdaff.com",
    "http://etc.com"
};

var foobarIndex = sites.IndexOf("http://foobar.com");

A third option, using the static IndexOf methods of Array and not changing your array at all:

var foobarIndex = Array.IndexOf(sites, "http://foobar.com");