Table of Contents

LINQ Quickly

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

Preface

What This Book Covers

Conventions

Reader Feedback

Customer Support

Downloading the Example Code for the Book

Errata

Questions

1. Overview

LINQ Architecture

Integration with SQL

Integration with XML

Support for C# 3.0 Language Features

Anonymous Types

Object Initializers

Collection Initializers

Partial Methods

Implicitly Typed Local Variables

Extensions

Expressions

Lambda Expressions

Query Expressions

Expression Trees

Summary

2. LINQ to Objects

Array of Integers

Collection of Objects

Reading from Strings

Reading from Text Files

Summary

3. LINQ to XML

Features

Class Library

Classes and Hierarchy

XElement Class

XAttribute Class

XDocument Class

Other Classes

LINQ to XML with Other XML Technologies

LINQ with XmlReader

LINQ with XSLT

LINQ with MSXML

Functional Construction

XML Names

Loading and Traversing XML

Loading XML

Traversing XML

Data Manipulation

Inserting or Adding Elements to XML

Inserting or Adding XML Attributes

Deleting XML

Updating XML

Deleting XML Attributes

Updating XML Attributes

Outputting and Streaming XML

Streaming XML

Querying XML

Query Operators

Queries

Ancestors and Descendants

XML Transformation

Dictionaries

Convert Dictionary to XML

Create Dictionary from XML

Writing XML as Text Files and CSV Files

Reading from CSV Files

LINQ to XML Events

XML Literals and Embedded Expressions in Visual Basic

Summary

4. LINQ to SQL

Working with Databases Using DataContext

Entity Classes

Attributes

Database Attribute

Table Attribute

Column Attribute

Association Attribute (Foreign Keys)

Relationships

Function Attribute

Parameter Attribute

Inheritance Mapping Attribute

Creating and Deleting Databases

DataContext Methods

Data Manipulation

LINQ to SQL Queries

Identifying Objects

Queries with Multiple Entities

Remote Queries and Local Queries

Deferred Loading

Immediate Loading

Projections

Constructing XML

Joins

Raw SQL Query

Query Result

Stored Procedures

User-Defined Functions

Class Generator Tool

Transactions

Handling Concurrency Conflicts

Object Relational Designer (O/R Designer)

Summary

5. LINQ over DataSet

Loading Data into DataSets

Querying Datasets

Sequence Operator

Querying Typed DataSets

DataSet Query Operators

CopyToDataTable

LoadDataRow

Intersect

Union

Except

Field

SetField

Projection

Join

SequenceEqual

Skip

Distinct

Summary

6. LINQ to XSD

Un-typed XML

Typed XML

Creating Typed XML using Visual Studio

Object Construction

Load Method

Parse Method

Save Method

Clone Method

Default Values

Customization of XML Objects

Mapping Time Customization

Compile Time Customization

Post Compile Customization

Using LINQ to XSD at Command Line

Summary

7. Standard Query Operators

Restriction Operators

Where

OfType

Projection Operators

Select

SelectMany

Join Operators

Join

GroupJoin

Concatenation Operator

Concat

Ordering Operators

Set Operators

Distinct

Except

Intersect

Union

Grouping Operators

GroupBy

ToLookup

Conversion Operators

AsEnumerable

Cast

OfType

ToArray

ToDictionary

ToList

ToLookup

Equality Operators

SequenceEqual

Generation Operators

Empty

Range

Repeat

Quantifiers

All

Any

Contains

Aggregation Operators

Average

Count

LongCount

Min

Max

Sum

Aggregate

Partitioning Operators

Take

Skip

TakeWhile

SkipWhile

TakeWhile

Element Operators

DefaultIfEmpty

ElementAt

ElementAtOrDefault

First

FirstOrDefault

Last

LastOrDefault

Single

SingleOrDefault

List of Query Operators

Query Operator Equivalent Expressions

Summary

A. Building an ASP.NET Application

B. LINQ with Outlook

Index

LINQ Quickly

N. Satheesh Kumar

LINQ Quickly

Copyright © 2007 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: November 2007

Production Reference: 1161107

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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Olton

Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.

ISBN 978-1-847192-54-7

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar (<vinayak.chittar@gmail.com>)

Credits

Author

N Satheesh Kumar

Reviewer

Granville Barnett

Senior Acquisition Editor

Douglas Paterson

Development Editor

Nikhil Bangera

Technical Editor

Sarvesh Shanbhag

Editorial Manager

Dipali Chittar

Project Manager

Abhijeet Deobhakta

Project Coordinator

Patricia Weir

Indexer

Hemangini Bari

Proofreader

Cathy Cumberlidge

Production Coordinators

Aparna Bhagat

Shantanu Zagade

Cover Designer

Aparna Bhagat

About the Author

N Satheesh Kumar has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science Engineering and has around eleven years of experience in software development lifecycle, project and program management. He started his career developing software applications using Borland software products in a company based in India, and then moved to the United Arab Emirates where he continued developing custom application software using Borland Delphi, and customizing Great Plain Dynamics (now known as Microsoft Dynamics) for an automobile company. He moved back to India and spent three years in design and developing application software using Microsoft products for a top multi national company, and then spent a couple of years in project management and program management activities. Now he works as a Technical Architect for a top retail company based in the United States. He works with the latest Microsoft technologies and has published many articles on LINQ and other features of .NET.

About the Reviewer

Granville Barnett's interest in programming has spanned many languages; his talents have been applied most notably at Microsoft. Granville has worked with LINQ since the LINQ May 2006 CTP and has since then advised some of the biggest companies in the world on the successful application of LINQ. Granville has a very active interest in data structures and algorithms, and compiler theory, design and implementation.

He would like to thank all at Microsoft, in particular the members of the UK Application Development Consulting team.

As an author, Granville has written several magazine and web articles on LINQ.

He can be reached through his website at http://gbarnett.org.

Preface

Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is a new feature in Visual Studio 2008 that extends its query capabilities using C# and Visual Basic. Visual Studio 2008 comes with LINQ provider assemblies that enable the use of LINQ with data sources, such as in-memory collections, SQL relational databases, ADO.NET Datasets, XML documents, etc. In Visual Studio 2008, Visual C# and Visual Basic are the languages that implement the LINQ language extensions. LINQ language extensions use the new standard query operators, API, which is the query language for any collection that implements IEnumerable.

This book introduces the reader to the basic concepts of LINQ, and takes them through using LINQ with an example-driven approach.

What This Book Covers

Chapter 1 looks at the overall features of LINQ, and gives an overview of different operators provided by LINQ to operate on objects, XML, relational databases, etc.

Chapter 2 examines LINQ to Objects, which means that you can use LINQ to query objects in a collection. Using this feature, you can access in-memory data structures using LINQ. You can directly query collections, and filter out required values without using powerful filtering, ordering, and grouping capabilities.

Chapter 3 looks at LINQ to XML. It is a new in-memory XML programming API to work against XML data. There are different ways of creating XML trees in .NET. LINQ to XML is the new method of creating and manipulating XML data through .NET. The properties and methods of LINQ help in navigating and manipulating XML elements and attributes.

Chapter 4, which covers LINQ to SQL, takes care of translating LINQ expressions into equivalent T-SQL, passing it onto the database for execution, and then returning the results back to the calling application. It reduces programming time and comes with two different design-time tools, which are used for converting relational database objects into object definitions. It also has the ability to create databases, and database objects.

Chapter 5 examines LINQ to DataSets. An ADO.NET DataSet provides a disconnected data source environment for applications. It can be used with multiple data sources. A DataSet has the flexibility of handling data locally in cache memory where the application resides. The application can continue working with a DataSet when it is disconnected from the source and is not dependent on the availability of the data source. The DataSet maintains information about the changes made to data so that updates can be tracked and sent back to the database as soon as the data source is available or reconnected.

Chapter 6 covers LINQ to XSD. It enhances XML programming by adding the feature of typed views on un-typed XML trees. LINQ to XSD gives a better programming environment by providing the object models generated from XML schemas. This is called typed XML programming.

Chapter 7 looks at standard query operators provided by LINQ, and how you can use some of them against different data sources.

Appendix A takes you through building a simple ASP.NET application using LINQ.

Appendix B tells you how to access Outlook objects using LINQ.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

There are three styles for code. Code words in text are shown as follows: LINQ queries work on sources which are IEnumerable<>. The new ADO.NET provides a feature for getting the rows enumerated by applying AsEnumerable() on DataTables.

A block of code will be set as follows:

public class Icecream

{

public string Name { get; set; }

public double Price { get; set; }

}

New terms and important words are introduced in a bold-type font.

Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes, for example, appear in our text like this: You can see DataTables listed in the DataSet Visualizer.

Reader Feedback

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book, what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply drop an email to <feedback@packtpub.com>, making sure to mention the book title in the subject of your message.

If there is a book that you need and would like to see us publish, please send us a note in the SUGGEST A TITLE form on www.packtpub.com or email www.packtpub.com/authors.

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Customer Support

Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

Downloading the Example Code for the Book

Visit http://www.packtpub.com/support, and select this book from the list of titles to download any example code or extra resources for this book. The files available for download will then be displayed.

The downloadable files contain instructions on how to use them.

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our contents, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in text or code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing this you can save other readers from frustration, and help to improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/support, selecting your book, clicking on the Submit Errata link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata are added to the list of existing errata. The existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.

Questions

You can contact us at <questions@packtpub.com> if you are having a problem with some aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address

Chapter 1. Overview

When we say Language Integrated Query, we might think that it is already integrated into the programming language, just as we write SQL queries in our application. So what is the difference or additional features that we are going to get in LINQ? How is LINQ going to make our programming life easier? Also, I am sure that we all want to know how the new feature, LINQ, is making use of the other new features of C# 3.0. We'll see many of those in this book.

LINQ Architecture

Language Integrated Query is a new feature in Visual Studio 2008 that extends the query capabilities, using C# and Visual Basic. Visual Studio 2008 comes with LINQ provider assemblies that enable the use of Language Integrated Queries with different data sources such as in-memory collections, SQL relational database, ADO.NET Datasets, XML documents and other data sources.

In Visual Studio 2008, Visual C# and Visual Basic are the languages that implement the LINQ language extensions. The LINQ language extensions use the new Standard Query Operators API, which is the query language for any collection that implements IEnumerable. It means that all collections and arrays can be queried using LINQ. The collections classes simply needs to implement IEnumerable, to enable it for LINQ to query the collections.

The following figure shows the architecture of LINQ, which can query different data sources using different programming languages:

Integration with SQL

LINQ to SQL supports LINQ queries against a relational database for data retrieval and manipulation. Currently in software development, we use Relational data for most of the applications, and we depend on database queries and objects, in some way or the other. The applications use APIs to process or get details from the database by passing queries as strings, or calling database objects by passing parameters. So what is the purpose of LINQ here? Presently scenario, we see a lot of applications, especially multi-tier applications, having a separate data access layer and a business logic layer. If we take the business logic layer, we must have lots of entities or objects to hold the information. These objects represent the database table rows in the form of objects. We use object references similar to primary keys in the database to identify a set of information.

To get data from a relational database to an application, the programmer ends up creating two different types of objects, but in different formats. The other disadvantage is that the programmer has to