Saturday, June 14, 2008

LINQPad – Cool Utility For LINQ

Maybe you know about this, but I saw it first few days a go. I feel in love.linqpadlogo

LINQPad is a cool little utility that was mainly created to allow you to test LINQ expressions and see them produce a  result and output the results in a nice easy to visualize format. It's great for running LINQ Queries without having to fire up Visual Studio.

LINQPad is also a great way to learn LINQ: it comes preloaded with 200 examples from the book,"C# 3.0 in a Nutshell" written by Joseph Albahari, the author of LINQPad.  There's no better way to experience the coolness of LINQ and functional programming.

LINQPad is more than just a LINQ query tool: it's a code snippet IDE. Instantly execute any C# 3 or VB 9 expression or statement block! LINQPad does a great job at LINQ execution and visualization, but it has a lot more uses than just a LINQ query tool. It's basically a snippet editor that allows you to save snippets and more importantly, execute just about any code that you can write as an expression or single function block.

For example, LINQ to SQL results:

linqpad1

Output can be displayed both as a result table view, the raw SQL (from .ToString()) and a useful code conversion from the LINQ Expression syntax to LINQ command syntax using command chaining of the various LINQ extensions methods.

Other example (from the preloaded examples):

linqpad2

There's no installation - it's a single self contained EXE you can copy anywhere assuming you have .NET 3.5 installed.

Download it here.

 

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