How to Find Item in Dictionary Collection?

Question

I have declared and populated the following collection.

protected static Dictionary _tags;

Now I want to look locate

Answer 1

Sometimes you still need to use FirstOrDefault if you have to do different tests. If the Key component of your dictionnary is nullable, you can do this:

thisTag = _tags.FirstOrDefault(t => t.Key.SubString(1,1) == 'a');
if(thisTag.Key != null) { ... }

Using FirstOrDefault, the returned KeyValuePair's key and value will both be null if no match is found.

Answer 2

Of course, if you want to make sure it's in there otherwise fail then this works:

thisTag = _tags[key];

NOTE: This will fail if the key,value pair does not exists but sometimes that is exactly what you want. This way you can catch it and do something about the error. I would only do this if I am certain that the key,value pair is or should be in the dictionary and if not I want it to know about it via the throw.

Answer 3

thisTag = _tags.FirstOrDefault(t => t.Key == tag);

is an inefficient and a little bit strange way to find something by key in a dictionary. Looking things up for a Key is the basic function of a Dictionary.

The basic solution would be:

if (_tags.Containskey(tag)) { string myValue = _tags[tag]; ... }

But that requires 2 lookups.

TryGetValue(key, out value) is more concise and efficient, it only does 1 lookup. And that answers the last part of your question, the best way to do a lookup is:

string myValue;
if (_tags.TryGetValue(tag, out myValue)) { /* use myValue */ }

---

VS 2017 update, for C# 7 and beyond we can declare the result variable inline:

if (_tags.TryGetValue(tag, out string myValue))
{
    // use myValue;
}
// use myValue, still in scope, null if not found

Answer 4

It's possible to find the element in Dictionary collection by using ContainsKey or TryGetValue as follows:

class Program
{
    protected static Dictionary<string, string> _tags = new Dictionary<string,string>();

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        string strValue;

        _tags.Add("101", "C#");
        _tags.Add("102", "ASP.NET");

        if (_tags.ContainsKey("101"))
        {
            strValue = _tags["101"];
            Console.WriteLine(strValue);
        }

        if (_tags.TryGetValue("101", out strValue))
        {
            Console.WriteLine(strValue);
        }
    }
}