Elegant way of combining two LINQ queries

Question

How can I combine these two LINQ queries in one?

var maxEndDate = lstDates.Select(s => s.EndDate).Max();    
var record = lstDates.Where(s => s.EndDate == maxEndDate).First();

Answer 1

MaxBy is what you are looking for: http://code.google.com/p/morelinq/source/browse/trunk/MoreLinq/MaxBy.cs using it like this:

var record = lstDates.MaxBy(a => a.EndDate);

EDIT 1: As Jason pointed out this method is intended to be used only when you are working with LINQ to Objects. If you are querying against a database (and so you are using LINQ to SQL, or whatever) you should consider using a different approach.

Yours seems quite readable but, if it doesn't satisfy you, you could always call AsEnumerable on the IQueryable object and then use MaxBy method.

var record = lstDates.AsEnumerable().MaxBy(a => a.EndDate);

EDIT 2: One thing you could change in your query is the second statement. Try to shorten it as follows (in order to avoid using Where):

var record = lstDates.First(s => s.EndDate == maxEndDate);