extract one column from a var using linq

Question

i have something like this

var emp = db.Employees.toList();

in my employees table i have emp name, emp id and salary, using linq with lambda expressions, how do i access emp id in some another variable. I have tried looking up for it, couldn't find a solution which does it using linq with lambda expressions

var employeeLeaves = db.Leaves
     .Include("Employee")
     .Include("Employee.Manager")
     .Where(l => l.Status.Id == 1)
     .GroupBy(l => l.Employee.Manager.Id)
     .Select(l => l.GroupBy(k=>k.Employee.Id).Select(j=>j.GroupBy(‌​p=>p.GroupId)))
     .ToList(); 

this is the actual query i have,dont ask me how i wrote it..:P now i want to get id column from employeeLeaves and store it in some another variable

Answer 1

It's not entirely clear what you're trying to do, which is why you've got so many answers with different approaches. If you're trying to turn the "collection of employees" into a "collection of IDs" then you want something like this:

var ids = emp.Select(x => x.Id);

Or more directly:

var ids = db.Employees.Select(x => x.Id);

(Optionally with ToList at the end of each of these.)

I would strongly advise you to learn LINQ (and the somewhat-related languages features such as var) thoroughly, from scratch, with the help of a good book or tutorial. Learning bits piecemeal by just finding samples which do something a bit like what you want is not a good approach, IMO.