Question

Is there a way to do a bulk update on a collection with LINQ? Currently if I have a List<myObject> and I want to update column1 to equal TEST for every row in the List I would setup a foreach loop and then for each individual object I would set the value and then save it. This works fine but I was just wondering if there was some LINQ method out there where I could do something like myOject.BulkUpdate(columnName, value)?

Answer 1

Sounds like you’re using LINQ To SQL, and you’ve got the basics laid out already.

LINQ To SQL is about abstracting tables into classes, and doesn’t really provide the ‘silver bullet’ or one-liner you are looking for.

The only way to do that is to achieve your one-liner would be to make a stored proc to take that column name and new value, and implement that logic yourself.

 db.MassUpdateTableColumn("Customer", "Name", "TEST");

 ....

 CREATE PROC MassUpdateTableColumn
    @TableName varchar(100), @ColumnName varchar(100), @NewVal varchar(100)
 AS
    /*your dynamic SQL to update a table column with a new val. */

Otherwise, it’s as you describe:

 List<Customer> myCusts = db.Customers.ToList();
 foreach(Customer c in myCusts)
 {
     c.Name = "TEST";
 }     
 db.SubmitChanges();