LINQ: Group by month and year within a datetime field

Question

I have a table with a datetime field. I want to retrieve a result set grouped by the month/year combination and the number of records that appear within that month/year. H

Answer 1

This is for those who are trying to accomplish the same but using lambda expressions.

Assuming that you already have a collection of entities and each entity has OrderDate as one of its properties.

yourCollection
// This will return the list with the most recent date first.
.OrderByDescending(x => x.OrderDate)
.GroupBy(x => new {x.OrderDate.Year, x.OrderDate.Month})
// Bonus: You can use this on a drop down
.Select(x => new SelectListItem
        {
           Value = string.Format("{0}|{1}", x.Key.Year, x.Key.Month),
           Text = string.Format("{0}/{1} (Count: {2})", x.Key.Year, x.Key.Month, x.Count())
        })
.ToList();

If you do not need the collection of SelectListItem then just replace the select with this one:

.Select(x => string.Format("{0}/{1} (Count: {2})", x.Key.Year, x.Key.Month, x.Count()))