Tuesday, February 24, 2015

The LINQ OfType<TResult> Method: Cast or Filter?

So, we're continuing a bit more with LINQ questions that I've had come up recently. Last time, we looked at the difference between using a LINQ method with a predicate or without. Today, we move on to another useful filtering tool: OfType<TResult>.

I use this method in one of my samples and have had some questions come up:
When you use OfType, does it do a cast? What happens if the type doesn't match?
Let's take a closer look at OfType, what it really does, and where I find it useful.

OfType in Action
Last time, we looked at the SingleOrDefault method, and we used the following sample code that saves off a selected item in a list box and then re-assigns it after the list box is repopulated:

Saving the Selected Item
Re-assigning the Selection

Notice that we're using "OfType<Person>()" on the contents of the list box. This is because the "Items" property is not strongly typed.

Let's look at the signature of "OfType":


This is an extension method (just like every other LINQ method). And if we take a closer look, we see this takes an "IEnumerable" as a parameter. Notice that the parameter does *not* have a generic type parameter. So this is an IEnumerable that contains "object" elements. The return value is an IEnumerable *with* a generic type parameter. So the result is strongly typed.

Cast or Filter?
If we just look at the method signature, we might be inclined to believe that this method is doing a cast -- coercing the contained items from "object" to the type of our choice. But this is not what is happening.
OfType<TResult>() is a Filter (not a cast).
The reality is that the "OfType" method is simply a filter, just like many other LINQ methods.

No Exceptions
This also means that if the type does not match the object in the IEnumerable, it does *not* throw an exception. Instead, it simply does not return that record.

A Useful Tool
I find the "OfType<TResult>" method to be a useful little tool when I want to convert an object-based collection into a strongly-typed collection. (I'm using "collection" in the general sense here. Technically, we're dealing with iterators (IEnumerable), and these do not need to represent a collection of objects; they could just a easily be a sequence that is generated on-the-fly as the elements are requested.)

In our case, I want to use LINQ methods against the "Items" property of a WPF list box. If we look at the "Items" property, we see that is an "ItemCollection":


And if we look at "ItemCollection", we see that it implements "IEnumerable" (which represents items of type "object"), but not "IEnumerable<T>" (a strongly-typed enumeration):


Pretty much all of the LINQ methods work on "IEnumerable<T>", like we saw with our "SingleOrDefault" method last time:


This means that we need to turn our "IEnumerable" into a strongly-typed "IEnumerable<T>". And that's exactly what "OfType<TResult>" does for us.

Where I Use OfType<TResult>
I find myself using the "OfType" method when dealing with UI controls, like in the examples we saw today. This is because the collection controls are designed to handle pretty much anything we can throw at them -- and that's one of the really cool things about XAML controls and XAML data binding.

But this also means that if we need to pull data out of a UI control, we need to cast it in order to work with it more easily. And that's exactly what "OfType" lets us do.

Again, this isn't doing a cast, but the outcome is pretty much the same. We put an IEnumerable of object in one end and get a strongly-typed IEnumerable<T> out the other end.

When we're using data binding, we often don't need to worry about this. If we have a strongly-typed collection in our view model, we can data bind it to the UI control with no problem at all. And the data binding infrastructure takes care of any type changes for us.

But there are times when we need to pull things out manually in order to work with them. In those situations, the "OfType" method makes things much easier.

Wrap Up
I tell people all the time that they need to take a look at all of the LINQ extension methods that are available to us. Go take another look right now: IEnumerable<T> Extension Methods. This list contains lots of useful methods. And there are a few gems in there that you may not know exist.

LINQ is one of my favorite things. That's probably because I deal with collections of in-memory objects all the time. I get data from a data source, and then I need to manipulate it a little bit for the UI. LINQ lets me do that very easily -- and the end result is happier users.

Next time, we'll take a look at the "Join" method. This is a little more complex, but it's not too hard to understand the parameters when we take them one at a time. So stay tuned for more on LINQ.

Happy Coding!

2 comments:

  1. One point not mentioned -- for the purposes of OfType, _null has no type_. This is great for operations where the next thing in the pipeline will unilaterally dereference objects coming its way (e.g. for working around the lack of the .? operator before C#6); but loses you any guarantee of 1:1 matching between input index and output index of an item, only the assurance that the latter is less than or equal to the former.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a good point, Steve. I haven't thought of using OfType to avoid NullReferenceExceptions, but that could be a good use case. As you mentioned this would work well if we want to just discard null values (since they would be filtered out), but it would be a problem if we wanted to treat null values differently.

      Delete