Part 10 - Ordering Operators in LINQ

Suggested Videos
Part 7 - Projection Operators
Part 8 - SelectMany Operator
Part 9 - Difference between Select and SelectMany



The following 5 standard LINQ query operators belong to Ordering Operators category
OrderBy
OrderByDescending
ThenBy
ThenByDescending
Reverse



OrderBy, OrderByDescending, ThenBy, and ThenByDescending can be used to sort data. Reverse method simply reverses the items in a given collection.

We will use the following Student class in this demo.

public class Student

{

    public int StudentID { get; set; }

    public string Name { get; set; }

    public int TotalMarks { get; set; }

    public static List<Student> GetAllStudents()

    {

        List<Student> listStudents = new List<Student>

        {

            new Student

            {

                StudentID= 101,

                Name = "Tom",

                TotalMarks = 800

            },

            new Student

            {

                StudentID= 102,

                Name = "Mary",

                TotalMarks = 900

            },

            new Student

            {

                StudentID= 103,

                Name = "Valarie",

                TotalMarks = 800

            },

            new Student

            {

                StudentID= 104,

                Name = "John",

                TotalMarks = 800

            },

        };

        return listStudents;

    }

}

Example 1: Sort Students by Name in ascending order

IEnumerable<Student> result = Student.GetAllStudents().OrderBy(s => s.Name);

foreach (Student student in result)

{

    Console.WriteLine(student.Name);

}

Output:


Example 2: Rewrite Example 1 using SQL like syntax

IEnumerable<Student> result = from student in Student.GetAllStudents()

                                                      orderby student.Name

                                                      select student;

foreach (Student student in result)

{

    Console.WriteLine(student.Name);

}

Output:
Same as in Example 1

Example 3: Sort Students by Name in descending order

IEnumerable<Student> result = Student.GetAllStudents().OrderByDescending(s => s.Name);

foreach (Student student in result)

{

    Console.WriteLine(student.Name);

}

Output:


Example 4: Rewrite Example 3 using SQL like syntax

IEnumerable<Student> result = from student in Student.GetAllStudents()

                                                      orderby student.Name descending

                                                      select student;

foreach (Student student in result)

{

    Console.WriteLine(student.Name);

}

Output:
Same as in Example 1