Creating a constant Dictionary in C#

Question

What is the most efficient way to create a constant (never changes at runtime) mapping of strings to ints?

I\'ve tried us

Answer 1

This is the closest thing you can get to a "CONST Dictionary":

public static int GetValueByName(string name)
{
    switch (name)
    {
        case "bob": return 1;
        case "billy": return 2;
        default: return -1;
    }
}

The compiler will be smart enough to build the code as clean as possible.

Answer 2

I am not sure why no one mentioned this but in C# for things that I cannot assign const, I use static read-only properties.

Example:

public static readonly Dictionary<string, string[]> NewDictionary = new Dictionary<string, string[]>()
        {
            { "Reference1", Array1 },
            { "Reference2", Array2 },
            { "Reference3", Array3 },
            { "Reference4", Array4 },
            { "Reference5", Array5 }
        };

Answer 3

Why not use namespaces or classes to nest your values? It may be imperfect, but it is very clean.

public static class ParentClass
{
    // here is the "dictionary" class
    public static class FooDictionary
    {
        public const string Key1 = "somevalue";
        public const string Foobar = "fubar";
    }
}

Now you can access .ParentClass.FooDictionary.Key1, etc.

Answer 4

There are precious few immutable collections in the current framework. I can think of one relatively pain-free option in .NET 3.5:

Use Enumerable.ToLookup() - the Lookup<,> class is immutable (but multi-valued on the rhs); you can do this from a Dictionary<,> quite easily:

    Dictionary<string, int> ids = new Dictionary<string, int> {
      {"abc",1}, {"def",2}, {"ghi",3}
    };
    ILookup<string, int> lookup = ids.ToLookup(x => x.Key, x => x.Value);
    int i = lookup["def"].Single();

Answer 5

Why not:

public class MyClass
{
    private Dictionary<string, int> _myCollection = new Dictionary<string, int>() { { "A", 1 }, { "B", 2 }, { "C", 3 } };

    public IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<string,int>> MyCollection
    {
        get { return _myCollection.AsEnumerable<KeyValuePair<string, int>>(); }
    }
}

Answer 6

Creating a truly compile-time generated constant dictionary in C# is not really a straightforward task. Actually, none of the answers here really achieve that.

There is one solution though which meets your requirements, although not necessarily a nice one; remember that according to the C# specification, switch-case tables are compiled to constant hash jump tables. That is, they are constant dictionaries, not a series of if-else statements. So consider a switch-case statement like this:

switch (myString)
{
   case "cat": return 0;
   case "dog": return 1;
   case "elephant": return 3;
}

This is exactly what you want. And yes, I know, it's ugly.