Question

I have something like this hard-coded:

private string[,] m_RolesForUser = new string[,] {
    {"John","President,Chair"},
    {"Lisa","Chair"},    
    {"Mike","Executive,President,Chair"},
};

How would I fill this array if the datasource was made up of a table of roles and a table of users. A user could have multiple roles. Not sure what the syntax is to construct the code to support something like this.

Answer 1

Why not use a Dictionary of a list of objects here? C# is an OO language, so using objects is much more preferred. The example below is using strings to fit your example, but you could even create a Person class and a Role class and have a Person tied to a list of Roles

private Dictionary<string, List<string>> roles = new Dictionary
    {
        {"John", new List{"President","Chair"}},
        {"Lisa", new List{"Chair"}},    
        {"Mike", new List{"Executive","President","Chair"}}
    }

To look for Lisa’s roles:

//Just verifying that Lisa exists.
//If you try to access a non-existent key you will get an exception
var roleLookingFor = "Lisa";
if(roles.Contains(roleLookingFor))
{
    foreach(var role in roles[roleLookingFor])
    {
        Console.Out.WriteLine(String.Format("{0} is in role '{1}'.", 
                                               roleLookingFor, role));
    }
}