Multi Value Dictionary?

Question

Anyone know of a good implementation of a MultiValueDictionary? Basically, I want something that allows multiple values per key. I want to be able to do somethi

Answer 1

Just to add my $0.02 to the collection of solutions:

I had the same need back in 2011 and created a MultiDictionary with a pedantically complete implementation of all the .NET interfaces. That includes enumerators that return a standard KeyValuePair<K, T> and support for the IDictionary<K, T>.Values property providing a collection of actual values (instead of an ICollection<ICollection<T>>).

That way, it fits in neatly with the rest of the .NET collection classes. I also defined an IMultiDictionary<K, T> interface to access operations that are particular to this kind of dictionary:

public interface IMultiDictionary<TKey, TValue> :
  IDictionary<TKey, ICollection<TValue>>,
  IDictionary,
  ICollection<KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>>,
  IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>>,
  IEnumerable {

  /// <summary>Adds a value into the dictionary</summary>
  /// <param name="key">Key the value will be stored under</param>
  /// <param name="value">Value that will be stored under the key</param>
  void Add(TKey key, TValue value);

  /// <summary>Determines the number of values stored under a key</summary>
  /// <param name="key">Key whose values will be counted</param>
  /// <returns>The number of values stored under the specified key</returns>
  int CountValues(TKey key);

  /// <summary>
  ///   Removes the item with the specified key and value from the dictionary
  /// </summary>
  /// <param name="key">Key of the item that will be removed</param>
  /// <param name="value">Value of the item that will be removed</param>
  /// <returns>True if the item was found and removed</returns>
  bool Remove(TKey key, TValue value);

  /// <summary>Removes all items of a key from the dictionary</summary>
  /// <param name="key">Key of the items that will be removed</param>
  /// <returns>The number of items that have been removed</returns>
  int RemoveKey(TKey key);

}

It can be compiled on anything from .NET 2.0 upwards and so far I've deployed it on the Xbox 360, Windows Phone 7, Linux and Unity 3D. There's also a complete unit test suite covering every single line of the code.

The code is licensed under the Common Public License (short: anything goes, but bug fixes to the library's code have to published) and can be found in my Subversion repository.

Answer 2

Here's one I wrote a while back that you can use.

It has a "MultiValueDictionary" class that inherits from Dictionary.

It also has an extension class that allows you to use the special Add functionality on any Dictionary where the value type is an IList; that way you're not forced to use the custom class if you don't want to.

public class MultiValueDictionary<KeyType, ValueType> : Dictionary<KeyType, List<ValueType>>
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Hide the regular Dictionary Add method
    /// </summary>
    new private void Add(KeyType key, List<ValueType> value)
    {            
        base.Add(key, value);
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Adds the specified value to the multi value dictionary.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="key">The key of the element to add.</param>
    /// <param name="value">The value of the element to add. The value can be null for reference types.</param>
    public void Add(KeyType key, ValueType value)
    {
        //add the value to the dictionary under the key
        MultiValueDictionaryExtensions.Add(this, key, value);
    }
}

public static class MultiValueDictionaryExtensions
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Adds the specified value to the multi value dictionary.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="key">The key of the element to add.</param>
    /// <param name="value">The value of the element to add. The value can be null for reference types.</param>
    public static void Add<KeyType, ListType, ValueType>(this Dictionary<KeyType, ListType> thisDictionary, 
                                                         KeyType key, ValueType value)
    where ListType : IList<ValueType>, new()
    {
        //if the dictionary doesn't contain the key, make a new list under the key
        if (!thisDictionary.ContainsKey(key))
        {
            thisDictionary.Add(key, new ListType());
        }

        //add the value to the list at the key index
        thisDictionary[key].Add(value);
    }
}

Answer 3

This ought to do for now...

public class MultiValueDictionary<TKey, TValue> : IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>>
{
    private Dictionary<TKey, LinkedList<TValue>> _dict = new Dictionary<TKey, LinkedList<TValue>>();

    public void Add(TKey key, TValue value)
    {
        if(!_dict.ContainsKey(key)) _dict[key] = new LinkedList<TValue>();
        _dict[key].AddLast(value);
    }

    public IEnumerator<KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>> GetEnumerator()
    {
        foreach (var list in _dict)
            foreach (var value in list.Value)
                yield return new KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>(list.Key, value);
    }

    IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator()
    {
        return GetEnumerator();
    }
}

Answer 4

It doesn't exist, but you can build one pretty quickly from Dictionary and List:

class MultiDict<TKey, TValue>  // no (collection) base class
{
   private Dictionary<TKey, List<TValue>> _data =  new Dictionary<TKey,List<TValue>>();

   public void Add(TKey k, TValue v)
   {
      // can be a optimized a little with TryGetValue, this is for clarity
      if (_data.ContainsKey(k))
         _data[k].Add(v)
      else
        _data.Add(k, new List<TValue>() { v}) ;
   }

   // more members
}