Question

I’m trying to serialize a Venue/Showtime relation in linq to Javascript and having hard time figuring out to group them, basically I have the following output from the linq

Venue ID |  Venue Name        |   Party Name             | Party ID
74          CityStars Cinema      Late Night (3am)         2
74          CityStars Cinema      Sunrise (6am)            3
74          CityStars Cinema      Morning (9am)            4
74          CityStars Cinema      Noon (12pm)              5
74          CityStars Cinema      After Noon (3pm)         6

Right now the query I have is this:

JavaScriptSerializer rSerialize = new JavaScriptSerializer();               
var enVenues = from v in db.Venues
               join t in db.VenueTimes on v.ID equals t.VenueID
               join p in db.VenueParty on t.PartyID equals p.ID
               select new
               {
                   VenueID = v.ID,
                   VenueName =  v.TitleEn,
                   PartyName = p.NameEn,
                   PartyID = p.ID
               };

rMovie.VenuesArray = rSerialize.Serialize(enVenues);

But What I would like to do is to group the linq by Venue Name to something like this:

{[
"VenueID" : 74, 
"VenueName" : "CitySars Cinema", 
"VenueShowtimes" : [ {"Late Night", 2}, {"Sunrise" , 3}, etc... ]
]}

How can I do this?

Answer 1

Building off of Leniel’s code, here is a version that uses your JavaScriptSerializer and should work with your select statement:

var venuesGrouped = enVenues.GroupBy(v => v.VenueName)
         .Select(group =>
             new
             {
                 VenueId = group.First().VenueId,
                 VenueName = group.Key,
                 VenueShowTimes = group.Select(v => new { PartyName = v.PartyName, PartyId = v.PartyId })
             });

string jsonresult = rSerialize.Serialize(venuesGrouped);