/NinetiesTV

Primary LanguageC#

NinetiesTV

A C# LINQ Exercise

In this exercise you'll write LINQ to explore a few well-known television shows from bygone era.

The Data

The data we'll be exploring consists of a list of 31 tv shows from the 90s. Each show record contains the following information:

  • Name of the show
  • Year the show started
  • Year the show ended
  • Genres for the show
  • Number of episodes
  • IMDB Rating

A CSV File

The data is located in a file called data.csv. It's a CSV file. CSV stands for Comma Separated Values. It's a text file in which each line (also known as a "row") is an individual record, and fields in each record are separated by commas. The first row in a CSV file is a header row. It contains names for each field in the records that follow.

Like JSON, CSV is a popular format for storing data in a simple text file. One advantage of CSV over JSON is that a CSV file can be opened by a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel. On the other hand, an advantage of JSON over CSV is that a JSON file can store more complex data such as objects and arrays.

It's recommended that you open the data.csv file (in VS Code or in a spreadsheet application) and keep it handy to help you to verify the correctness of your code. If you use VS Code you might want to install the Rainbow CSV extension to make reading the file a little easier.

Loading the Data

In order to use LINQ to explore the tv data, the data must be loaded into a collection of C# objects. The code provided in this repo handles that for you. The GetShows() static method of the DataLoader class will read the data from the CSV file and load it into a List<Show> where Show is a class that contains properties to contain the data for a single show.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO READ, UNDERSTAND - OR EVEN LOOK AT - THE DataLoader CLASS. UNDERSTANDING THAT CODE IS NOT ONE OF THE OBJECTIVES OF THIS EXERCISE.

You should take a look at the Show class though.

The Exercise

All code that you will write will be in the Program class. Take a look at this class. You'll see the code is broken into four sections.

  1. The Main method contains code that:
    • gets a List<Show>
    • calls several methods that accept that list as an argument
    • Prints the results of each method along with a header to describe the data that's being printed
  2. The main Exercises block. This is where you'll write your LINQ code
  3. A few challenges for you to try if you complete the rest of the exercises
  4. A few methods used for printing results

Your task is to read and understand the existing code in the Program class, and write code in each "Exercise" method that satisfies that method's comment.

NOTE: Make sure you run the code regularly.