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Let's see how we can explicitly sort the results of a query using the `OrderBy` or `OrderByDescending` LINQ operators.
Follow Along
To follow along commiting your changes to this course, you'll need to fork the dotnet-comic-book-gallery-model repo. Then you can clone, commit, and push your changes to your fork like this:
git clone <your-fork>
cd dotnet-comic-book-gallery-model
git checkout tags/v4.3 -b sorting-queries
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Up to this point, we've been retrieving entities in their implicit or
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natural order.
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This can cause the entities to be displayed in unexpected ways.
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Because of this, it's typically a requirement for
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results to be explicitly sorted by one or more properties.
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We can explicitly sort the results of a query using the OrderBy or
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OrderByDescending link operators.
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Let's start with removing the Where link operator so
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our query will retrieve all of the comic books from the database.
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Then, let's sort the results of our query by issue number, in descending order.
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.OrderByDescending(cb => cb.IssueNumber).
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Here's the list of our comic books sorted in descending order by issue number.
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Now our query contains a SQL ORDER BY clause.
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It's important to note that you can't add multiple calls to the OrderBy or
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OrderByDescending operators like we could with the Where operator.
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.OrderBy(cb => cb.PublishedOn).
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The last call made will be the one that is used.
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If you need to sort on more than one column, you can use the ThenBy or
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ThenByDescending operators.
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TheBy.
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Now our query will be sorted by the IssueNumber column values in descending
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order, then by the PublishedOn column values in ascending order.
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Let's look at an example of how we can leverage deferred execution to extend
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a query.
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We can start by defining our base query.
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That includes a descending sort on issue number.
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var comicBooksQuery = context.ComicBooks.Include,
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so our series navigation property will be populated.
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(cb => cb.Series).
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Then .OrderByDescending(cb => cb.IssueNumber).
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Then we could execute that query to retrieve a list of all of the comic books.
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var comicBooks = comicBooksQuery.ToList().
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We could also add a Where operator to the base query and execute that query
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to retrieve the comic books that have an average rating less than seven.
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var comicBooks2 =
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comicBooksQuery.Where(cb =>
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cb.AverageRating < 7).ToList().
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Because the base query includes an OrderByDescending operator,
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both queries will include an OrderBy clause.
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Before we test our queries, let's add a second foreach loop to output the second
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list of comic books to the Console.
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Foreach (var comicBook in comicBooks2),
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then Console.WriteLine(comicBook.DisplayText).
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Let's also write the count of the second comic books collection to the Console..
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And let's output an extra blank line just above the second list.
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And here's our two lists of comic books.
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The first list is a complete list of comic books sorted by issue number
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in descending order.
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The second list is a list of the comic books that have an average rating less
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than seven.
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Also sorted by issue number in descending order.
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Here's the first query that retrieves all of the comic books.
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Notice that it has an ORDER BY clause.
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And here's the second query that is filtering by the average rating.
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As expected, it also has an ORDER BY clause.
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