Using LINQ Take to Select Specific Data

Authors - Abdul Rahman (Content Writer), Regina Sharon (Graphic Designer)

Last updated one year ago

linq

26 Articles

In this article, let's learn about how to use Take and TakeWhile in LINQ in .NET.

Note: If you have not done so already, I recommend you read the article on Using LINQ Single to Select Single Data in Collections.

Introduction

We can perform partition and select specific piece of data from beginning of a collection using LINQ. We're going to use Take() and TakeWhile() methods. Let's take a look at each of these methods and how they work.

Perform partition using Take

When listing the items, its not always possible to list all the items. Sometimes we need to limit and partition the items from database or need a pagination in UI to display subset of records for better UX (User Experience) as not all the datas are required everytime unless its a reporting task. So Take(n) allows you to take only specific items from beginning of collection. It takes number of items given as input and returns n number of records from collection.

Code Sample - LINQ Take

Demo - LINQ Take Clause Demo

Let's try LINQ Take

We have Product class with following properties - Id, Name, Color, Price, Size
Enter the number of products you would like to list.
Click on Take Range Button
Click on reset to try other combination

Id	Name	Color	Price	Size
1	Shirt	Black	1000	18
2	Shirt	Red	1500	28
3	Shirt	Black	2000	38
4	Shirt	Red	2500	48
5	Shirt	Brown	3000	58
6	Shirt	White	3500	68

Perform partition using Take with Range syntax

We can also use the Range Operator with Take() like Take(2..4), Take(..3), Take(^2..^4) or Take(3..).

Code Sample - LINQ Take using Range Operator

Demo - LINQ Take Clause with Range Demo

Let's try LINQ Take

We have Product class with following properties - Id, Name, Color, Price, Size
Enter the number of products you would like to list.
Click on Take Button
Click on reset to try other combination

Id	Name	Color	Price	Size
1	Shirt	Black	1000	18
2	Shirt	Red	1500	28
3	Shirt	Black	2000	38
4	Shirt	Red	2500	48
5	Shirt	Brown	3000	58
6	Shirt	White	3500	68

Perform conditional partition using TakeWhile

We can also extract data conditionally using TakeWhile while the condition evaluates to true. Note that Enumeration stops when the predicate function returns false for an element or when source contains no more elements.

Code Sample - LINQ TakeWhile

Demo - LINQ TakeWhile Clause Demo

Let's try LINQ TakeWhile

We have Product class with following properties - Id, Name, Color, Price, Size
Enter the condition based on which you like to select.
Click on Take While Button
Click on reset to try other combination

Id	Name	Color	Price	Size
1	Shirt	Black	1000	18
2	Shirt	Red	1500	28
3	Shirt	Black	2000	38
4	Shirt	Red	2500	48
5	Shirt	Brown	3000	58
6	Shirt	White	3500	68

Summary

In this article we learn't how to locate partition and extract specific data within collection using Take and TakeWhile. We saw that there's an option to supply range of values using range operator. We also saw how we can pass an condition to partition data. All these can be used with any IEnumerable or IQueryable types.

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