How to return concatenated strings with a query

Question

Let's say I have this relationship:  A Person has zero or many Aliases.  How can I query the database to return a set of Persons with all their Aliases concatenated as a single string?

 

For instance, if Peter's aliases are "Pedro", "Simon", "Simeon" and "Pete", I'd like to return the following:

 

"Pedro, Simon, Simeon, Pete"

 

I know I can query for the list of Aliases and concatenate them locally, but I'd rather do it in the query.  Is this possible?  I was thinking of writing a custom Aggregate(),  Is that the way to go?

 

 

 

 

 

Answer 1

Here is how to do it:

Code Snippet

from person in Person
select new {
  Name = person.Name
  Aliases = String.Join(",", person.Aliases.Select(a => a.AliasText).ToArray())
}

Answer 2

right on!  Thanks.