Remove duplicates from a List in C#

Question

Anyone have a quick method for de-duplicating a generic List in C#?

Answer 1

If you have tow classes Product and Customer and we want to remove duplicate items from their list

public class Product
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string ProductName { get; set; }
}

public class Customer
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string CustomerName { get; set; }

}

You must define a generic class in the form below

public class ItemEqualityComparer : IEqualityComparer where T : class
{
    private readonly PropertyInfo _propertyInfo;

    public ItemEqualityComparer(string keyItem)
    {
        _propertyInfo = typeof(T).GetProperty(keyItem, BindingFlags.GetProperty | BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public);
    }

    public bool Equals(T x, T y)
    {
        var xValue = _propertyInfo?.GetValue(x, null);
        var yValue = _propertyInfo?.GetValue(y, null);
        return xValue != null && yValue != null && xValue.Equals(yValue);
    }

    public int GetHashCode(T obj)
    {
        var propertyValue = _propertyInfo.GetValue(obj, null);
        return propertyValue == null ? 0 : propertyValue.GetHashCode();
    }
}

then, You can remove duplicate items in your list.

var products = new List
            {
                new Product{ProductName = "product 1" ,Id = 1,},
                new Product{ProductName = "product 2" ,Id = 2,},
                new Product{ProductName = "product 2" ,Id = 4,},
                new Product{ProductName = "product 2" ,Id = 4,},
            };
var productList = products.Distinct(new ItemEqualityComparer(nameof(Product.Id))).ToList();

var customers = new List
            {
                new Customer{CustomerName = "Customer 1" ,Id = 5,},
                new Customer{CustomerName = "Customer 2" ,Id = 5,},
                new Customer{CustomerName = "Customer 2" ,Id = 5,},
                new Customer{CustomerName = "Customer 2" ,Id = 5,},
            };
var customerList = customers.Distinct(new ItemEqualityComparer(nameof(Customer.Id))).ToList();

this code remove duplicate items by Id if you want remove duplicate items by other property, you can change nameof(YourClass.DuplicateProperty) same nameof(Customer.CustomerName) then remove duplicate items by CustomerName Property.