LINQ for querying a DTO for a specific Name-Value pair in a generic and recursive manner

Question

I have a DTO which is composed of a series of collections. Each of these collections again hold various name-value pairs in their InnerLists.

Is there a way to query the DTO for a specific name and get its value...irrespective of the Collection or the position in the InnerList it is in?

Answer 1

You can use a pattern like this. Notice how I have two different collections in my class but I am exposing a unified iterator, which is used in Main function to treat it like one collection and print out all the even elements in all collections.

 class Foo : IEnumerable<int>
    {
        List<int> first = new List<int>();
        List<int> second = new List<int>();


        public Foo()
        {
            first.Add( 1 );
            first.Add( 2 );

            second.Add( 11 );
            second.Add( 12 );
        }


        public IEnumerator<int> GetEnumerator()
        {
            foreach (var f in first)
            {
                yield return f;
            }

            foreach (var f in second)
            {
                yield return f;
            } 
        }
    }

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Foo f = new Foo();

        foreach (var d in f.Where(x => x % 2 == 0))
        {
            Console.WriteLine(d);
        }


        Console.ReadLine();
    }