Question

I have a table which I’m displaying in a grid. I’m being asked to mask the value of certain column if another value in that same row meets some condition.

Take for example:

public class Container
{
     public string Name { get; set; }
     public int Volume { get; set; }
}

IQueryable<Container> myContainerList;
// Imagine some code to populate the object

Currently, I’m masking the Volume field like so:

var filteredList = from container in myContainerList
                   let vol = container.Name.ToUpper().Contains("SPECIAL") ? 
                                                       -1 : container.Volume
                   select new Container()
                   {
                       Name = Name,
                       Volume = vol
                   };

This successfully masks the volume of any container with the name “special” in it, but this seems inefficient to me.

Is there a better way of going about this?

Answer 1

I’d add another property to the Container class:

public string MaskedVol
{
  get 
  { 
    return (Name.IndexOf("SPECIAL", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) != -1 ) ? "--" : Volume.ToString();
  }
}