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Comma Separated List Using LINQ

Few days back I was doing one of my projects and I have found one easy way to convert a collection into comma separated string using LINQ. So I thought it is worth to share it with you.

In this article I will create a dataset (from the XML file) and convert the rows in table to a comma separated string.

The main motive of the code which I am going to write is get the comma separated list of countries. So here I am creating a XML file

<root>
    <country>India</country>
    <country>Sri Lanka</country>
    <country>Australia</country>
</root>

Let us say I give the name of the file XMLFile1.xml. Now it is time to put some code in the code behind on the form load of a windows application. It should be noted that you can put this code on any event.

In the form load event I have written the following code.

DataSet ds = new DataSet();
ds.ReadXml(@"C:\Users\guptak\Desktop\CommaSep\CommaSep\XMLFile1.xml");
string str = string.Join(",", (from element in ds.Tables[0].AsEnumerable() select element["country_text"].ToString()).ToArray());
MessageBox.Show(str);

This message box will give you the output as "India,Sri Lanka,Australia"

Now let me explain the piece of code which I have written above. First 2 lines of code are self explanatory in the first line I have created a dataset and in the second line I am reading the XML file.

If you debug the application you can see that after reading the XML dataset will contain a single table and having three records. Please see the screen shot.

Picture showing the output of how to convert the table into the comma separated list using LINQ

Click to Enlarge

In the third line the code (from element in ds.Tables[0].AsEnumerable() select element["country_text"].ToString()).ToArray() converts your collection into a single dimmensional array. Finally by using string.Join we are converting an one dimmensional array into a comma separated string.

Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Thursday, December 23, 2010

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