Intercode.Toolbox.Collections 2.1.1

Intercode.Toolbox.Collections

A .NET library that provides classes that define generic collections and collection-related utilities that are not found in the BCL.

Collections

MutableLookup classes

The mutable lookup collections provide a multi-value dictionary-like interface that allows for the storage of multiple values for a single key. Note that these collections are not thread-safe and should not be used in multi-threaded scenarios without proper synchronization.

The classes were inspired by the similarly named classes in the MutableLookup package.

MutableLookup<TKey, TValue>

The MutableLookup abstract class provides the base functionality for the mutable lookup collections. A custom mutable lookup class that must derive from it and implement the abstract methods:

• AddValue: Adds a value to the underlying container; must return true if the value was added, false otherwise.
• AddValues: Adds a collection of values to the underlying container.
• TrimExcess: Sets the capacity of the underlying conntainer to what it would be if it had been originally initialized with all its entries.

MutableListLookup<TKey, TValue>

The MutableListLookup class is a mutable lookup that uses a List<TValue> as the underlying collection.

To add an value to the lookup, call the Add method with the key and value as arguments:

var lookup = new MutableListLookup<string, string>();
lookup.Add( "A", "One" );
lookup.Add( "A", "Two" );
lookup.Add( "B", "Three" );

In the previous example, the lookup will contain two groupings: one with the key A and values One and Two, and another with the key B and value Three.

By default, the MutableListLookup class uses the key's default equality comparer to compare keys. To use a custom equality comparer, pass it as an argument to the constructor:

var lookup = new MutableListLookup<string, string>( StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase );
lookup.Add( "A", "One" );
lookup.Add( "a", "Two" );

In this case, the lookup will contain a single grouping with the key A and values One and Two.

Note that the ListLookup's Add method will always return true, because a list has no restrictions on the number of times a value can be added to it.

MutableHashSetLookup<TKey, TValue>

The MutableHashSetLookup class is a mutable lookup that uses a HashSet<TValue> as the underlying collection and will not contain duplicate values for the same key. MutableHashSetLookup has constructors that allow you to specify the equality comparer for the keys and values.

To add a value to the lookup, call the Add method with the key and value as arguments:

var lookup = new MutableHashSetLookup<string, string>();
lookup.Add( "A", "One" );
lookup.Add( "A", "Two" );
lookup.Add( "A", "Two" );

In the previous example, the lookup will contain a single grouping with the key A and values One and Two. The first two calls to Add will return true, while the third call will return false.

Helpers

Several extension methods are provided to simplify the creation of mutable lookups from an existing IEnumerable<T>:

• ToMutableListLookup: Create a MutableListLookup<TKey, TValue> from an IEnumerable<TValue> using a key selector. There are several overloads that set the key comparer, and the value selector.

• ToMutableHashSetLookup: Create a MutableListLookup<TKey, TValue> from an IEnumerable<TValue> using a key selector and a value selector. There are several overloads that set the key and value comparers, and the value selector.

  var lookup1 = people.ToMutableListLookup( p => p.LastName ); // Mutable lookup of people keyed by their last name.
  var lookup2 = people.ToMutableListLookup( p => p.LastName, p => p.FirstName ); // Mutable lookup of people's names keyed by their last name.
  var lookup3 = people.ToMutableHashSetLookup( p => p.LastName, p => p.FirstName ); // Mutable lookup of people's names keyed by their last name, with no duplicate first names.
  

Extension methods

• EmptyIfNull<T>( source ): Returns an empty array if source is null. This method has overloads for arrays, enumerables, or collctions.
• AsArray<T>( T? item): Converts the specified item to an array, if the item is null, the returned array will be empty.
• Batch<T>( source, batchSize): Batches the elements of the source into groups of the specified batch size. It has overload to optimize batching for IList<T>.

Examples:

int[]? nullarray = null;
var emptyarray = nullarray.EmptyIfNull(); // emptyarray is an empty array.

var item = 42;
var array = item.AsArray(); // array contains a single element: 42.

var source = Enumerable.Range( 1, 10 );
var batches = source.Batch( 3 ); // batches contains three groups: { 1, 2, 3 }, { 4, 5, 6 }, { 7, 8, 9 }, and { 10 }.

Usage

To use the extension methods provided by this project, simply import the Intercode.Toolbox.Collections namespace and call the desired method on the target object.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.