Question

I have the following query. Is there an easy way that I could sort the results in numeric order
of RowKey. Currently RowKey is a string. I would like to sort _rowData and NOT modify this query as I want to try some different sort orders and I’m looking for one line changes and not to redo the query.

var _rowData = (from qu in _que.GetAll(
  u => u.PartitionKey == partitionKey )
  select new {
    qu.PartitionKey,
    qu.RowKey,
    qu.Style,
    qu.ShortTitle,
    ModifiedToString = String.Format("{0:MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm}", qu.Modified)
});

I want to do the sorting outside of the LINQ query. The reason is that actually I want to be able to let the user choose a sort of RowKey, ModifiedToString and ShortTitle.

Answer 1

When you use the OrderBy extension, you don’t modify the original query, it just enumerates the same values:

var _rowData = ...
var _rowDataSortedByRowKey = _rowData.OrderBy( u => u.RowKey );
var _rowDataSortedByModifiedToString = _rowData.OrderBy( u => u.ModifiedToString );
var _rowDataSortedByShortTitle = _rowData.OrderBy( u => u.ShortTitle );
var _rowDataSortedByOther = _rowData.OrderBy( ... );