[c#] Linq code to select one item

I find myself writing a lot of code like this to select one item that matches

var item = (from x in Items where x.Id == 123 select x).First();

Is there a cleaner way of doing it or is this as concise as I'm going to get?

EDIT: Should have said "Cleaner way using linq syntax". I was already aware of the lambda syntax and it's starting to look like this is actually the only way. I did get some useful info though, so thanks to everyone who replied.

This question is related to c# linq

The answer is


You could use the extension method syntax:

var item = Items.Select(x => x.Id == 123).FirstOrDefault();

Other than that, I'm not sure how much more concise you can get, without maybe writing your own specialized "First" and "FirstOrDefault" extension methods.


I'll tell you what worked for me:

int id = int.Parse(insertItem.OwnerTableView.DataKeyValues[insertItem.ItemIndex]["id_usuario"].ToString());

var query = user.First(x => x.id_usuario == id);
tbUsername.Text = query.username;
tbEmail.Text = query.email;
tbPassword.Text = query.password;

My id is the row I want to query, in this case I got it from a radGrid, then I used it to query, but this query returns a row, then you can assign the values you got from the query to textbox, or anything, I had to assign those to textbox.


These are the preferred methods:

var item = Items.SingleOrDefault(x => x.Id == 123);

Or

var item = Items.Single(x => x.Id == 123);

Just to make someone's life easier, the linq query with lambda expression

(from x in Items where x.Id == 123 select x).FirstOrDefault();

does result in an SQL query with a select top (1) in it.


FirstOrDefault or SingleOrDefault might be useful, depending on your scenario, and whether you want to handle there being zero or more than one matches:

FirstOrDefault: Returns the first element of a sequence, or a default value if no element is found.

SingleOrDefault: Returns the only element of a sequence, or a default value if the sequence is empty; this method throws an exception if there is more than one element in the sequence

I don't know how this works in a linq 'from' query but in lambda syntax it looks like this:

var item1 = Items.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Id == 123);
var item2 = Items.SingleOrDefault(x => x.Id == 123);

That can better be condensed down to this.

var item = Items.First(x => x.Id == 123);

Your query is currently collecting all results (and there may be more than one) within the enumerable and then taking the first one from that set, doing more work than necessary.

Single/SingleOrDefault are worthwhile, but only if you want to iterate through the entire collection and verify that the match is unique in addition to selecting that match. First/FirstOrDefault will just take the first match and leave, regardless of how many duplicates actually exist.