How to add multiple values to Dictionary in C#?

Question

What is the best way to add multiple values to a Dictionary if I don't want to call ".Add()" multiple times.

Edit: I want to fill it after initiation! there are already some values in the Dictionary!

So instead of

    myDictionary.Add("a", "b");
    myDictionary.Add("f", "v");
    myDictionary.Add("s", "d");
    myDictionary.Add("r", "m");
    ...

I want to do something like this

 myDictionary.Add(["a","b"], ["f","v"],["s","d"]);

Is there a way to do so?

Answer 1

You can use curly braces for that, though this only works for initialization:

var myDictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>
{
    {"a", "b"},
    {"f", "v"},
    {"s", "d"},
    {"r", "m"}
};

This is called "collection initialization" and works for any ICollection<T> (see link for dictionaries or this link for any other collection type). In fact, it works for any object type that implements IEnumerable and contains an Add method:

class Foo : IEnumerable
{
    public void Add<T1, T2, T3>(T1 t1, T2 t2, T3 t3) { }
    // ...
}

Foo foo = new Foo
{
    {1, 2, 3},
    {2, 3, 4}
};

Basically this is just syntactic sugar for calling the Add-method repeatedly. After initialization there are a few ways to do this, one of them being calling the Add-methods manually:

var myDictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>
    {
        {"a", "b"},
        {"f", "v"}
    };

var anotherDictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>
    {
        {"s", "d"},
        {"r", "m"}
    };

// Merge anotherDictionary into myDictionary, which may throw
// (as usually) on duplicate keys
foreach (var keyValuePair in anotherDictionary)
{
    myDictionary.Add(keyValuePair.Key, keyValuePair.Value);
}

Or as extension method:

static class DictionaryExtensions
{
    public static void Add<TKey, TValue>(this IDictionary<TKey, TValue> target, IDictionary<TKey, TValue> source)
    {
        if (source == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("source");
        if (target == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("target");

        foreach (var keyValuePair in source)
        {
            target.Add(keyValuePair.Key, keyValuePair.Value);
        }
    }
}

var myDictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>
    {
        {"a", "b"},
        {"f", "v"}
    };

myDictionary.Add(new Dictionary<string, string>
    {
        {"s", "d"},
        {"r", "m"}
    });