Question

I’ve got a list view and I have to populate it with states as the root nodes, and the cities as the child nodes. It’s a tedious task.

I have a Dictionary<String,List<String>> and doing it like this.

Dictionary<string, List<String>> locations = new Dictionary<string, List<String>>();

List<String> alabama = new List<String>();
alabama.add("city1");
alabama.add("city2");
alabama.add("city3");

....

locations.add("alabama",alabama);

....

Doing that for each state and city is getting annoying, and I just cant help but think there is an easier way.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Using collection initializer syntax and arrays instead of lists reduces the number of keystrokes a bit:

var locations = new Dictionary<string, string[]>
{
    { "alabama", new[] { "city1", "city2", "city3", ... } },
    ...
}