Dictionary<T> look-up or create made simpler

August 2009 – August 2010 .NET .NET C# Tweet 5,776 views   8 responses

The design of a Dictionary<T> lends itself well to a caching or identification mechanism and as a result you often see code that looks like this:

private static Dictionary<string,Employee> employees;
…
public static Employee GetByName(string name) {
    Employee employee;
    if (!employees.TryGetValue(name, out employee)) {
        employee = new Employee(whatever);
        employees.Add(name, employee);
    }
    return employee;
}

It’s not that it is particularly difficult but it can be a bit error prone and when you’re doing it over and over. What would be nicer is something that let you do:

public static Employee GetByName(string name) {
    return employees.GetOrAdd(name, () => new Employee(whatever));
}

Here’s an extension method to drop-in to a static class of your choosing that achieves just that.

public static TDictionaryValue GetOrAdd<TKey, TDictionaryValue>(this IDictionary<TKey, TDictionaryValue> dictionary, TKey key, Func<TDictionaryValue> newValue)
{
    TDictionaryValue value;
    if (!dictionary.TryGetValue(key, out value)) {
        value = newValue.Invoke();
        dictionary.Add(key, value);
    }
    return value;
}

[)amien

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