Difference between Select and SelectMany in LINQ. Select is used to select value from a collection whereas SelectMany is used to select values from a collection of collection i.e. nested collection. Select and SelectMany both are projection operators.
SelectMany flattens queries that return lists of lists. For example:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 | public class PhoneNumber { public string Number { get; set; } } public class Person { public IEnumerable<PhoneNumber> PhoneNumbers { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } } IEnumerable<Person> people = new List<Person>(); // Select gets a list of lists of phone numbers IEnumerable<IEnumerable<PhoneNumber>> phoneLists = people.Select(p => p.PhoneNumbers); // SelectMany flattens it to just a list of phone numbers. IEnumerable<PhoneNumber> phoneNumbers = people.SelectMany(p => p.PhoneNumbers); // And to include data from the parent in the result: // pass an expression to the second parameter (resultSelector) in the overload: var directory = people .SelectMany(p => p.PhoneNumbers, (parent, child) => new { parent.Name, child.Number }); |
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