Convert a delimited string to a List of KeyValuePair<string,string> in C#

Question

My question is very similar to Convert a delimted string to a dictionary<string,string> in C# , except instead of Dictionary<String, String> , I want List<KeyValuePair<String, String>> (in my case order of those key-value pairs is important)

So, to rephrase my problem:

I have a string in the following format "key1=value1;key2=value2;key3=value3" . I need to convert it to a List<KeyValuePair<String, String>> for the above mentioned key value pairs.

I can do this without using LINQ, but can this be done using LINQ? and how?

Answer 1

You have to do some tricky stuff with splitting your string. Basically, you need to split by your main delimiter ( ';' ) so you end up with: key1=value1 , key2=value2 , key3=value3 . Then, you split each of those by the secondary delimiter ( '=' ). Select that into a new key value pair of strings. It should look similar to this:

var str = "key1=value1;key2=value2;key3=value3";

List<KeyValuePair<string, string>> kvp = str.Split(';')
                                            .Select(x => new KeyValuePair<string, string>
                                                      (x.Split('=')[0], x.Split('=')[1]))
                                            .ToList();

EDIT:

As suggested in comment by Joel Lucsy , you can alter the select to only split once:

.Select(x => { var p = s.Split('='); return new KeyValuePair<string,string>(p[0],p[1]); })

Answer 2

Try to split by semicolon and then split every item by equal sign

"key1=value1;key2=value2;key3=value3"
.Split(';')
.Select(x=>{
   var items=x.Split('=');
   return new KeyValuePair<string,string>(items[0],items[1]);
   })
 .ToList()