Designing Sortable Collections using IComparable

.NET Framework Class Library  provides several interfaces to support additional functionality in collections such as ICollection, IList, and IComparable.

Implementing IComparable

IComparable interface is used to support the sorting in collections. It has one method - CompareTo. When you are desiging sortable objects, you must implement CompareTo method of IComparable.

For example, I create a Developer class, which is inherited from IComparable.

public class Developer : IComparable { }

Now I implement CompareTo method like following:

public int CompareTo(object obj) { // Some code here }

Now let's say, Developer class has a property called ID and you want your items to be sorted on ID, we simply add the following code:

public int CompareTo(object obj) {       if( !(obj is Developer) )             throw new InvalidCastException("Not a valid Developer object.");       Developer developer = (Developer)obj;               return this.ID.CompareTo(developer.ID); }

As you can see from the above code, it basically compares the current value of the object with the new value.

Now let's say, the Developer object has public properties called - FirstName, LastName, Age, and Experience and you want the sorting can be done based on any of these properties.

To do so, I defined an enumeration:

public enum SortFilter {       FirstName,       LastName,       Age,       Experience }

After that, I add a static property to the Developer class of type SortFilter:

private static SortFilter sortingBy = SortFilter.FirstName; public static SortFilter SortingBy {       get { return sortingBy; }       set { sortingBy = value; } }

Now I change the CompareTo method to the following:

public int CompareTo(object obj) {       if( !(obj is Developer) )             throw new InvalidCastException("Not a valid Developer object.");       Developer developer = (Developer)obj;        switch(Developer.SortingBy)       {              case SortFilter.FirstName:                     return this.FirstName.CompareTo(developer.FirstName);         case SortFilter.LastName:                     return this.LastName.CompareTo(developer.LastName);         case SortFilter.Age:              return this.Age.CompareTo(developer.Age);         case SortFilter.Experience:             return this.Experience.CompareTo(developer.Experience);         default:                   goto case SortFilter.FirstName;       } }

As you can see from the above code, I have a case statement for each filter. Now my class is ready to support sorting. All I have to do is, create an ArrayList of Developer objects, set the sorting filter, and call Sort method.

The following code creates an ArrayList of Developer objects.

private ArrayList GetList() {       ArrayList list = new ArrayList();       list.Add(new Developer("Mahesh", "Chand", 30, "C#,ASP.NET,Windows Forms", 10)) ;        list.Add(new Developer("Michael", "Gold", 35, "GDI+, ASP.NET", 15)) ;        list.Add(new Developer("Bhasker", "Das", 26, "VB.NET, Web Applications", 4)) ;        list.Add(new Developer("Ashish", "Singhal", 24, "ADO.NET, GDI+", 4)) ;        list.Add(new Developer("Neel", "Beniwal", 3, "C#,ASP.NET,Windows Forms", 0)) ;        list.Add(new Developer("Melanie", "Talmadge", 25, "Java", 2)) ;        return list; }

The following code sets the SortingBy filter as "FirstName" and calls the Sort method of ArrayList. Now ArrayList will return sorted results.

ArrayList list = GetList(); Developer.SortingBy = (SortFilter)Enum.Parse(typeof(SortFilter), "FirstName"); list.Sort();

Sorting Order

Now you may also want to add sorting order feature  (ascending or descending) to your object. To support this, I add a SortOrder enumeartion:

public enum SortOrder {       Ascending,     Descending }

I also add SortingOrder static property to the Developer class as following:

private static SortOrder sortingOrder = SortOrder.Ascending; public static SortOrder SortingOrder {       get { return sortingOrder; }       set { sortingOrder = value; } }

I change the CompareTo method as following. As you can see from this method, now I am checking if SortingOrder is Ascending or Descending and based on that I am comparing the values.

public int CompareTo(object obj) {       if( !(obj is Developer) )             throw new InvalidCastException("Not a valid Developer object.");        Developer developer = (Developer)obj;        switch(Developer.SortingBy)       {             case SortFilter.FirstName:                    if (Developer.sortingOrder == SortOrder.Ascending)                       return this.FirstName.CompareTo(developer.FirstName);                   else return developer.FirstName.CompareTo(this.FirstName);             case SortFilter.LastName:                    if (Developer.sortingOrder == SortOrder.Ascending)                         return this.LastName.CompareTo(developer.LastName);                   else return developer.LastName.CompareTo(this.LastName);             case SortFilter.Age:                    if (Developer.sortingOrder == SortOrder.Ascending)                         return this.Age.CompareTo(developer.Age);                   else return developer.Age.CompareTo(this.Age);             case SortFilter.Experience:                   if (Developer.sortingOrder == SortOrder.Ascending)                         return this.Experience.CompareTo(developer.Experience);                   else return developer.Experience.CompareTo(this.Experience);             default:                   goto case SortFilter.FirstName;       } }

Now only thing I have to do is, set the SortingOrder property of Developer object and call Sort method. That should do it. See the attached source code for more details.

Developer.SortingOrder = (SortOrder)Enum.Parse(typeof(SortOrder), "Descending"); list.Sort();

Summary

In this article, I discussed how to use IComparable interface to design a collection of sortable objects.