LEFT OUTER JOIN in LINQ

Question

How to perform left outer join in C# LINQ to objects without using join-on-equals-into clauses? Is there any way to do that with where clause? Corr

Answer 1

Now as an extension method:

public static class LinqExt
{
    public static IEnumerable LeftOuterJoin(this IEnumerable left, IEnumerable right, Func leftKey, Func rightKey,
        Func result)
    {
        return left.GroupJoin(right, leftKey, rightKey, (l, r) => new { l, r })
             .SelectMany(
                 o => o.r.DefaultIfEmpty(),
                 (l, r) => new { lft= l.l, rght = r })
             .Select(o => result.Invoke(o.lft, o.rght));
    }
}

Use like you would normally use join:

var contents = list.LeftOuterJoin(list2, 
             l => l.country, 
             r => r.name,
            (l, r) => new { count = l.Count(), l.country, l.reason, r.people })

Hope this saves you some time.