198Microsoft Visual Studio 2010: A Beginner’s Guide
Creating a LINQ Projection with Anonymous Types
You can customize what is returned by the select clause by using what is called an anonymous type. This customization of return values is called a projection. Anonymous types facilitate custom projections, allowing you to return the results of a LINQ query in a form that you specify without needing to declare a new type ahead of time. Here’s an example of creating a query that declares a new anonymous type for combining the FirstName and LastName properties of Customer into a variable, FullName, that is created as a
C#:
var customers =
from cust in custList
where cust.FirstName.StartsWith("M") select new
{
FullName = cust.FirstName + " " + cust.LastName
};
foreach (var cust in customers)
{
Console.WriteLine(cust.FullName);
}
VB:
Dim customers =
From cust In custList
Where cust.FirstName.StartsWith("M") Select New With
{
.FullName = cust.FirstName & " " & cust.LastName
}
For Each cust In customers
Console.WriteLine(cust.FullName)
Next
In both the C# and VB select clauses you see a new statement (New With in VB) that defines the anonymous type. The new anonymous type has a single property, FullName, that is the combination of FirstName and LastName in Customer, but the new type will
