How to make a Type Sortable on Different Criteria in C# ?

Posted by AbundantCode

IComparable interface is a great way to sort your objects by using the sorting routines of the List. There is a another interface called IComparer<T> which allows the objects to be sorted based on different criteria.

How to make a Type Sortable on Different Criteria in C# ?

For example , if you wanted to sort the Employee objects by Id , you can create a new class called CompareId which implements the IComparer<Employee> interface as shown below.

public class CompareId : IComparer<Employee>
{
    public int Compare(Employee x, Employee y)
    {
        return x.Id.CompareTo(y.Id);
    }
}

When you sort the List , you pass the instance of the CompareId class to the sort method of the List.

CompareId objId = new CompareId();           
employees.Sort(objId);

The complete sourcecode of the example of Icomparer interface demo is below.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace ConsoleApplication5
{
    public class CompareId : IComparer<Employee>
    {
        public int Compare(Employee x, Employee y)
        {
            return x.Id.CompareTo(y.Id);
        }
    }
    public class Employee : IComparable<Employee>
    {
        public string Name { get; set; }
        public string Department { get; set; }
        public int Id { get; set; }
        public int Age { get; set; }

        public Employee(string name, int id, int age, string department)
        {
            this.Age = age;
            this.Name = name;
            this.Department = department;
            this.Id = id;
        }
        // Implement the CompareTo method of IComparable interface
        public int CompareTo(Employee other)
        {
            return this.Age.CompareTo(other.Age);
        }
    }
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            List<Employee> employees = new List<Employee>();
            Employee emp1 = new Employee("Vijay",189,45,"Technology");
            Employee emp2 = new Employee("Ajith Kumar", 120, 50, "Design");
            Employee emp3 = new Employee("Surya", 201, 40, "Testing");
            employees.Add(emp1);
            employees.Add(emp2);
            employees.Add(emp3);

            foreach(var item in employees)
                Console.WriteLine(item.Name);

            Console.WriteLine("-After Sorting-");

            // Id Comparer - instance creation
            CompareId objId = new CompareId();           
            employees.Sort(objId);

            foreach(var item in employees)
                Console.WriteLine(item.Name);
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }   
}
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