Using Linq to group a list of objects into a new grouped list of list of objects

Question

Hi,

I don't know if this is possible in Linq but here goes...

I have an object:

public class User
{
  public int UserID { get; set; }
  public string UserName { get; set; }
  public int GroupID { get; set; }
}

I return a list that may look like the following:

List<User> userList = new List<User>();
userList.Add( new User { UserID = 1, UserName = "UserOne", GroupID = 1 } );
userList.Add( new User { UserID = 2, UserName = "UserTwo", GroupID = 1 } );
userList.Add( new User { UserID = 3, UserName = "UserThree", GroupID = 2 } );
userList.Add( new User { UserID = 4, UserName = "UserFour", GroupID = 1 } );
userList.Add( new User { UserID = 5, UserName = "UserFive", GroupID = 3 } );
userList.Add( new User { UserID = 6, UserName = "UserSix", GroupID = 3 } );

I want to be able to run a Linq query on the above list that groups all the users by GroupID. So the out pub will be a list of user lists that contains user (if that makes sense?). So the out put would be something like:

GroupedUserList
    UserList
        UserID = 1, UserName = "UserOne", GroupID = 1
        UserID = 2, UserName = "UserTwo", GroupID = 1
        UserID = 4, UserName = "UserFour", GroupID = 1
    UserList
        UserID = 3, UserName = "UserThree", GroupID = 2
    UserList
        UserID = 5, UserName = "UserFive", GroupID = 3
        UserID = 6, UserName = "UserSix", GroupID = 3

I've tried using the groupby linq clause but this seems to return a list of keys and its not grouped by correctly:

var groupedCustomerList = userList.GroupBy( u => u.GroupID ).ToList();

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

var groupedCustomerList = userList
    .GroupBy(u => u.GroupID)
    .Select(grp => grp.ToList())
    .ToList();

Answer 2

Your group statement will group by group ID. For example, if you then write:

foreach (var group in groupedCustomerList)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Group {0}", group.Key);
    foreach (var user in group)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("  {0}", user.UserName);
    }
}

that should work fine. Each group has a key, but also contains allows you to iterate over the members of the group. As Lee mentions, you can convert each group to a list if you really want to, but if you're just going to iterate over them as per the code above, there's no real benefit in doing so.