Can you create a simple 'EqualityComparer' using a lambda expression

Question

Short question:

Is there a simple way in LINQ to objects to get a distinct list of objects from a list based on a key property on the objects.

Answer 1

(There are two solutions here - see the end for the second one):

My MiscUtil library has a ProjectionEqualityComparer class (and two supporting classes to make use of type inference).

Here's an example of using it:

EqualityComparer<GalleryImage> comparer = 
    ProjectionEqualityComparer<GalleryImage>.Create(x => x.id);

Here's the code (comments removed)

// Helper class for construction
public static class ProjectionEqualityComparer
{
    public static ProjectionEqualityComparer<TSource, TKey>
        Create<TSource, TKey>(Func<TSource, TKey> projection)
    {
        return new ProjectionEqualityComparer<TSource, TKey>(projection);
    }

    public static ProjectionEqualityComparer<TSource, TKey>
        Create<TSource, TKey> (TSource ignored,
                               Func<TSource, TKey> projection)
    {
        return new ProjectionEqualityComparer<TSource, TKey>(projection);
    }
}

public static class ProjectionEqualityComparer<TSource>
{
    public static ProjectionEqualityComparer<TSource, TKey>
        Create<TKey>(Func<TSource, TKey> projection)
    {
        return new ProjectionEqualityComparer<TSource, TKey>(projection);
    }
}

public class ProjectionEqualityComparer<TSource, TKey>
    : IEqualityComparer<TSource>
{
    readonly Func<TSource, TKey> projection;
    readonly IEqualityComparer<TKey> comparer;

    public ProjectionEqualityComparer(Func<TSource, TKey> projection)
        : this(projection, null)
    {
    }

    public ProjectionEqualityComparer(
        Func<TSource, TKey> projection,
        IEqualityComparer<TKey> comparer)
    {
        projection.ThrowIfNull("projection");
        this.comparer = comparer ?? EqualityComparer<TKey>.Default;
        this.projection = projection;
    }

    public bool Equals(TSource x, TSource y)
    {
        if (x == null && y == null)
        {
            return true;
        }
        if (x == null || y == null)
        {
            return false;
        }
        return comparer.Equals(projection(x), projection(y));
    }

    public int GetHashCode(TSource obj)
    {
        if (obj == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("obj");
        }
        return comparer.GetHashCode(projection(obj));
    }
}

Second solution

To do this just for Distinct, you can use the DistinctBy extension in MoreLINQ:

    public static IEnumerable<TSource> DistinctBy<TSource, TKey>
        (this IEnumerable<TSource> source,
         Func<TSource, TKey> keySelector)
    {
        return source.DistinctBy(keySelector, null);
    }

    public static IEnumerable<TSource> DistinctBy<TSource, TKey>
        (this IEnumerable<TSource> source,
         Func<TSource, TKey> keySelector,
         IEqualityComparer<TKey> comparer)
    {
        source.ThrowIfNull("source");
        keySelector.ThrowIfNull("keySelector");
        return DistinctByImpl(source, keySelector, comparer);
    }

    private static IEnumerable<TSource> DistinctByImpl<TSource, TKey>
        (IEnumerable<TSource> source,
         Func<TSource, TKey> keySelector,
         IEqualityComparer<TKey> comparer)
    {
        HashSet<TKey> knownKeys = new HashSet<TKey>(comparer);
        foreach (TSource element in source)
        {
            if (knownKeys.Add(keySelector(element)))
            {
                yield return element;
            }
        }
    }

In both cases, ThrowIfNull looks like this:

public static void ThrowIfNull<T>(this T data, string name) where T : class
{
    if (data == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException(name);
    }
}

Answer 2

Here's an interesting article that extends LINQ for this purpose... http://www.singingeels.com/Articles/Extending_LINQ__Specifying_a_Property_in_the_Distinct_Function.aspx

The default Distinct compares objects based on their hashcode - to easily make your objects work with Distinct, you could override the GetHashcode method.. but you mentioned that you are retrieving your objects from a web service, so you may not be able to do that in this case.