Linq extension method, how to find child in collection recursive

Question

I\'m already familiar with Linq but have little understanding of extension methods I\'m hoping someone can help me out.

So I have this hierarchical collection pseudo cod

Answer 1

You can flatten your tree structure using this extension method:

static IEnumerable Flatten(this IEnumerable source)
{
    return source.Concat(source.SelectMany(p => p.Children.Flatten()));
}

Usage:

var product42 = products.Flatten().Single(p => p.Id == 42);

Note that this is probably not very fast. If you repeatedly need to find a product by id, create a dictionary:

var dict = products.Flatten().ToDictionary(p => p.Id);

var product42 = dict[42];