Hello! I was hoping someone could tell me if there is a better, more efficient way to go about this. Basically, here is the situation. I have a program that has a DataTable. Using a settings file, I need to be able to group by multiple columns.
To give an example.. maybe the settings file is xml with something like:
I already know how to read in the XML properly and all of that, and how to do basic LINQ GroupBy, but what I need to do is find a way to dynamically decide which columns that it should group by. Right now the way I'm doing it works... but it really seems ugly and inefficient. Essentially I'm juggling a list of lists of rows. Initially the list of lists just contains a single list of rows, so something like:
Now, if I were to run, say, GroupBy(job_number) I would end up with a list of two lists of rows, so...
So every time you do another group by, it goes into each group and generates a new set of lists which get added back to the root list of lists...
Just talking about the way I'm doing it makes me a bit confused trying to keep track of it. This seems ugly to me... anyone know of another way to do this? I can really see this causing me to pull some hair out...
To give an example.. maybe the settings file is xml with something like:
XML:
...
<GroupingColumns>
<Column>employee_number</Column>
<Column>clock_OUT_date</Column>
<Column>job_number</column>
</GroupingColumns>
...I already know how to read in the XML properly and all of that, and how to do basic LINQ GroupBy, but what I need to do is find a way to dynamically decide which columns that it should group by. Right now the way I'm doing it works... but it really seems ugly and inefficient. Essentially I'm juggling a list of lists of rows. Initially the list of lists just contains a single list of rows, so something like:
Code:
list
{
list
{
row
{
employee_number = 1,
clock_OUT_date = 8-25-2013,
job_number = 1,
hours = 10
},
row
{
employee_number = 1,
clock_OUT_date = 8-26-2013,
job_number = 2,
hours = 10
}
row
{
employee_number = 2,
clock_OUT_date = 8-25-2013,
job_number = 1,
hours = 8
}
}
}Now, if I were to run, say, GroupBy(job_number) I would end up with a list of two lists of rows, so...
Code:
list
{
list
{
row
{
employee_number = 1,
clock_OUT_date = 8-25-2013,
job_number = 1,
hours = 10
},
row
{
employee_number = 2,
clock_OUT_date = 8-25-2013,
job_number = 1,
hours = 8
}
},
list
{
row
{
employee_number = 1,
clock_OUT_date = 8-26-2013,
job_number = 2,
hours = 10
}
}
}So every time you do another group by, it goes into each group and generates a new set of lists which get added back to the root list of lists...
Just talking about the way I'm doing it makes me a bit confused trying to keep track of it. This seems ugly to me... anyone know of another way to do this? I can really see this causing me to pull some hair out...