?: Operator in LINQ Query

Question

• How do I utilize a ?: operator in the SELECT clause of a LINQ query? If this can\'t be done, how can I emulate one? The goal is to get a CASE block in my select claus

Answer 1

When creating an anonymous type (what you're doing with the "new" without specifying a type) you have to specify the member name for each property. From your example, it would look something like this: (also fixed your joins)

var query = from a in db.tblActivities
            join i in db.tblIPs on a.ipid equals i.id
            join u in db.tblUsers on i.uid equals u.id
            select new {
               UserName = (u.UserName ?? i.Address),
               Request = a.Request,
               Date = a.DateTime
            };

You could probably do the UserName your way, too:

UserName = (u.UserName == null) ? i.Address : u.UserName,

but the ?? operator is more concise. It's similar to "isnull" in SQL.